


Till Human Voices Wake Us

by mrstater



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, F/M, Horror, Nudity, Romance, Sexual Tension, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-30
Updated: 2011-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-17 09:44:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Remus' mysterious work for the Order requires Tonks' assistance, feelings that run far deeper than comrades at arms come to light. Is romance possible when the work proves to be the stuff nightmares are made of?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.  
>  I do not think that they will sing to me.  
> I have seen them riding seaward on the waves  
> Coming the white hair of the waves blown back  
> When the wind blows the water white and black.  
> We have lingered in the chambers of the sea  
> By sea-girls wretched with seaweed red and brown  
> Till human voices wake us, and we drown._  
> (T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")

  
**I.**   


"You know, dear," says Molly, as soon as _The Witching Hour_ breaks for a commercial, flicking her wand to lower the volume on the little wireless that perches precariously on the ledge of the high, grimy sill of a kitchen window, "if you can brew a potion, you can cook. A simple meal, at the very least."

Tonks looks up from her cauldron to Molly, nearby at the sink doing the washing up, and it isn't lost on Molly or on two of the three men at the table (Remus and Arthur are playing a lackadaisical game of chess while Sirius is buried in the _Evening Prophet_ crossword puzzle) that this is the first time Tonks has smiled since she turned up just before dinner, pale and jumpy and clumsier than usual, looking like she hasn't had much sleep. Which she hasn't, and Remus knows this, as she asked him to swap night duties with her two nights ago because Rufus Scrimgeour had her down for back-to-back patrols in Cardiff, where Sirius had been 'sighted'.

What Remus _doesn't_ know is that while Tonks slept most of this afternoon away, she doesn't feel rested because she dreamt the whole time. Dreamt about being here, doing this, and about what might come after, which involves him.

And they weren't at all pleasant dreams.

They were, on the contrary, the sort of dreams that make you wake up with your mouth open in a silent scream, your hair damp and plastered to your forehead, your sheets twisted round your legs, your pyjamas clinging to your skin, and for hours afterward, your eyes burn with the images that haunted your sleep.

Even though when Remus greeted her at the front door, gallantly stepping in front of the troll-foot umbrella stand to prevent her falling over it, she wanted to fall into his arms and weep with relief that her nightmare _hadn't_ come true, she cannot look him in the eyes (and it isn't lost on him and Molly that she has not) without seeing the beautiful blue extinguished of the light of life, staring blankly out of an ashen face.

But Remus, of course, hasn't any idea of any of these things. He is a little hurt by her avoidance, as she usually seeks out his company readily, but he is not particularly baffled by her demeanour, as there is a logical reason for it: brewing Wolfsbane Potion for him is _finally_ making it real to her that he is a werewolf. Therefore he cannot blame her for feeling skittish, and though he is sorry to lose the sometimes flirtatious camaraderie they've shared up till now, it was fun while it lasted, he really couldn't have expected it to turn out any differently, and he's just glad to see her smiling again.

"That's what my mum said when I got my Potions N.E.W.T," Tonks tells Molly as she stirs the contents of the cauldron with a grace she's never managed to reproduce in cookery. "I swear to Merlin, instead of making her proud, that high mark only made her more disappointed in my lack of domesticity."

"Funny," says Remus. "When my O.W.L. results arrived with a Troll in Potions, _my_ mum said I'd better spend my last two years of school finding a wife, as I'd never be able to cook for myself."

Tonks glances over her shoulder at him with a look and a laugh that makes him move one of his bishops into a very stupid position on the board, indeed, though he is, as yet, unaware that Arthur's next move will be to capture it with his queen.

"So it's your abysmal Potions marks us single witches have to thank for your still being an eligible bachelor?"

"Yep," answers Sirius, whom everyone thought was oblivious to the world beyond his crossword. "Since he wasn't allowed to go on in Potions, and all the girls likely to make good cooks were taking N.E.W.T-level classes, Remus decided it just wasn't worth bothering with dating. Pitiful excuse for being a bachelor, isn't it? Especially compared to mine."

"You mean that you've always been slightly more in love with yourself than any witch you've ever known?" Remus ribs, as Sirius has been in a pretty good mood today, and it would be a shame to spoil it with thoughts of Azkaban, even ones made in jest. "As Wolfsbane Potion is an extremely difficult potion to brew, Nymphadora," he goes on, shifting his gaze back to her, "I am sure you've an inner gourmet chef."

"Does that mean Professor Snape's culinarily inclined? And don't call me Nymphadora, Remus."

Molly, also troubled by Tonks' uncharacteristic mood, though the explanations Remus has attributed it to never cross her mind, glances at him and mouths her thanks, and she even laughs when Sirius, with whom she bickered before dinner, says, "I'd never eat anything cooked by Snivellus, as odds are it was cooked in oil that dribbled out of that lubricious hair of his."

" _Lubricious_ ," Remus repeats. "Did you just read that in your crossword?"

The other three laugh and exchange eye-rolls over chessboards and sinks full of dishes and bubbling cauldrons as Sirius huffily defends his vocabulary, tweaking Remus in return by accusing him of flirting with Tonks, which makes her face flood with colour and Molly's eyes gleam and dart to Remus, who fights to keep his face neutral, leaving Arthur to change the subject.

"What is it that makes Wolfsbane Potion so difficult to brew?"

"It's got poison in it," says Tonks.

The kitchen goes silent, even the wireless only crackles with dead airtime as if it, too, is waiting for a punch line, because Tonks doesn't make grim statements like that, despite being Alastor Moody's protégée, unless she's doing her best impression of him for comical effect.

"No, really," she says, and holds up a deep purple flower like the one she has just been mincing. "See? Aconite."

Again, Tonks is met with silence and blank stares, and her eyes meet no one's as she twists the stem between the tips of her thumb and forefinger, staining her fair skin green, Remus notices, while her other hand fiddles with the delicate petals.

"I'm sure you remember from day one of first year Potions that aconite's lethal to werewolves," she explains.

"My stars," sputters Molly, holding her dishtowel like a lifeline, while the silence of the others is tangible and smothering as a rising tide.

"Actually," Remus says, "if memory serves, Professor Slughorn always taught Babbling Beverages on the first day, to help the first years feel more comfortable speaking out."

"How do _you_ remember our first day of Potions, Mister T Is For Troll?" says Sirius, scribbling an answer onto his crossword.

Before Remus can seize this golden opportunity to steer away from the awkward and disturbing subject, Tonks speaks again:

"Damocles Belby theorised that in just the right amount, aconite would literally kill the mind of the wolf so that at transformation, the human mind would retain control over the body. It's a very precise science, getting the right amount of aconite, and if there's even a fraction too little, it won't work at all, and if there's too much..."

Her face goes ghastly white, with the exception of two spots of deep colour on her high cheekbones, a mirror image, though thinner, of course, of Molly's, who pats her hand and offers a few words that would be encouraging if only her tone didn't communicate that she can hardly believe she is hearing this sort of talk about monsters and how to kill them in the midst of something as mundane as the washing up. Arthur smiles and reminds Remus that it's his move and he's short a bishop now, but Sirius lets out a low whistle.

"Damn, Moony! Did you realise you were putting your life in that bastard Snivellus' hands when he was brewing it for you?"

Sirius' steely eyes cut sidelong, indicating Tonks, and something inside Remus coils and knots at his mate's (thankfully) unspoken implication that now he's putting his life in a pair of very clumsy hands, and does he really trust her?

The truth, which he will not admit, even to himself, not in so many words at least, is that Remus is not certain he _does_ trust Tonks to do this for him, though it has nothing to do with her apparent affliction of being all thumbs and no fingers.

Potions N.E.W.T. or not, she never had to brew Wolfsbane Potion during Auror training, and she didn't volunteer to do it, though she didn't - _couldn't_ \- say no when Snape told Dumbledore that working as a double agent _and_ a teacher did not leave sufficient free time to brew complicated potions, and perhaps Black could brush up _his_ skills since he has nothing better to do, or Nymphadora, who _might_ be up to the task if she can avoid tripping or spilling. Remus is sure Tonks won't get in her own way, but _Wolfsbane Potion_...Only a handful of wizards and witches who brew Potions _for a living_ can brew Wolfsbane Potion. He cannot afford - literally - to be ill, and Dumbledore needs him healthy, not to mention _alive_ , to carry out a bit of spy work himself, for which he is as uniquely suited as Snape is for his.

Which is also why he cannot refuse Wolfsbane Potion. Though he cannot tell Sirius any of this.

"Harry thought so," he says, and though usually he tries to avoid getting Sirius het up about Severus, it is, undeniably, a sure-fire way to distract him from an unwanted conversation, and this is no exception, as Sirius immediately lays aside his crossword and tilts his chair back on two legs, arms akimbo as his fingers rake through the back of his long black hair.

"There was a Hogsmeade weekend he didn't have permission to attend," Remus goes on, though he immediately wishes he'd begun differently, as Sirius' thick brows knit heavily over his eyes, which cloud with his guilty thoughts of not being there for his godson, "so I invited him for a cup of tea in my office, and while we chatted, Severus brought my potion. Harry told me I shouldn't drink it, as Severus wanted my job and Harry wouldn't put it past him to poison me to get it."

Sirius lets out his barking laugh. "Smart boy! Good to know he takes after his dad and me."

"Somewhere, a pair of green eyes are rolling and Lily's asking James which one of you was the size of a Hippogriff for nine months preceding twenty-nine hours of labour-"

"Why didn't you listen to him?"

"Oh, for Merlin's sake!" cries Molly, whirling around and, hands-on-hips, looking at Sirius as she does the twins. "Severus might not be the friendliest man in the world, but he wouldn't _poison_ anyone to get a job!"

"Wouldn't he just?" Sirius says. "Rule number one for How To Get Away With Murder: Poison a Werewolf."

"Sirius!" Molly rebukes; at the same time, Remus corrects, "You mean: How To Get Away With Murder and Get An Order Of Merlin For It, Too."

Sirius howls, but Remus' chuckle dies in his throat and he wishes he hadn't let himself get carried away with his friend, even though it's been ages since he's had someone he can joke about this with and it feels so _good_ , because clearly this is not something anyone else is comfortable enough with to joke about, and if he'd just thought about it, there wouldn't be this painful silence. Molly's wringing that poor dishtowel to death and looking with alarm at Tonks, whose shoulders are taut and hunched, and if Sirius weren't sat in line with her, Remus would see that Tonks' slim white fingers are curled claw-like around the hilt of her knife, the blade of which has sliced into the edge of the wooden cutting board.

She did this at the moment Remus piped in about Order of Merlin, the _snick_ of the knife accompanied by a rather blatant gasp of horror, which Remus, of course, couldn't hear over Sirius' laughter. If he _had_ heard it, he would not have put it down to her hating that such things are true, and even more, hating that he is so accepting that injustice is his lot that he can laugh about it; his mind would not go there, because he cannot fathom anyone but James and Sirius, once in a lifetime friends, getting that far past The Werewolf Thing (though he had thought, once, that Peter was that sort of friend, so he has been wrong before), especially now, when everyone looks so _frightened._

Everyone except for Arthur, who pushes his glasses up on his nose as he hunches over the chessboard and, in that wise tone it's so easy to forget he possesses when he's lit up like a child at Christmas, in wonderment at eckletricity and fellytones, says, "The Ministry might have forgotten what justice means, but Dumbledore hasn't. He wouldn't keep Severus on at Hogwarts if he were disloyal to the other teachers any more than he would be part of the Order if we couldn't trust him with our lives."

"And you-" Molly regains her balance in the wake of Arthur's level-headed speech, and brandishes a wooden spoon coated in cake batter and soapy dishwater, which she wags at Sirius, making Remus regret his words all the more, as there is nothing like a quarrel with Molly to send Sirius into his darkest and unreachable moods. " _You_ had best _un_ -poison Harry to Professor Snape before the children go back to school, or-"

"Oh, come and stir my cauldron..." Sirius bursts out in falsetto, as Celestina Warbeck's jazz hit strikes up on the wireless. He leaps up from his chair and flicks his wand to turn up the volume. "...And if you do it right...I'll boil you up some hot, strong love...To keep you warm tonight!"

As Sirius grabs Molly's soapy hands and twirls her around the kitchen, Remus sits back in his chair, inhaling deeply of the air which no longer feels quite so thick now that Molly is blushing and singing along with Sirius when she's not telling him how she and Arthur used to dance to this song before they were married. Remus apologises to Arthur for taking so long to take his turn at chess, but of course Arthur hasn't been paying any more attention than he has, and doesn't expect him to move any time soon, and not just because Sirius is so entertaining.

Tonks seems utterly oblivious to the hilarity swinging around her, and now Sirius is out of the way, Remus sees her carefully gathering up the aconite blossoms with violet-stained fingertips and dropping them into a mortar. Her brow furrows as she grinds them, dark eyes trained on the task, the same intense focus with which she approaches her Auror work. But when she lays aside the pestle and tilts the shallow bowl over the cauldron, she hesitates, catching her breath, biting her lower lip, before adding the aconite to the boiling mixture.

Remus' breath hangs in his chest, too, and his heart pounds, though not with an intuitive realisation that her current train of thought echoes his a moment ago, that she is an Auror, not a potions expert, and the Order cannot afford to lose Remus because she killed him with a potion she hasn't got the credentials to brew. His heart would pound even harder if he realised that she is also thinking of how such a loss would touch her at a deeper and more personal level than guilt or sorrow for a fallen comrade, especially as he is aware of her stirring something deep within him which has lain still since Halloween, 1981, though in actuality it is something acutely different to what he found - and lost - with his friends, something which has never moved in him before. He is not sure exactly what that is, but nonetheless he obeys its prompting to excuse himself from the game of chess and go to her.

It might cross his mind that her hesitation ought to make him nervous about drinking this potion, and some small part of him might even actually fear that doing so will not go well for him, but that is inconsequential, unimportant, in light of what this means to Tonks, and what she needs of him.

The floorboards creak beneath his feet, and though Tonks hears his approach, and knows he's stopped just behind her, when his hand comes to rest lightly on her shoulder, she jumps.

The pulse in her neck quickens, and in his wrist, his own responds, matching it.

"I can't thank you enough for this," he says.

Drawing a deep breath, Tonks whispers - or Remus thinks it - "Now or never," and adds the aconite to the brew, sighing heavily as the purple petals dissolve into nothing but potent magic.

"Shouldn't you save your thanks till you're sure I haven't poisoned you?" she asks, summoning a serpentine-stemmed goblet from the cupboard.

She ladles a measure of potion into it, then, turning toward him, offers the cup.

As Remus accepts it, the tips of his fingers brush hers. Her touch makes him shiver, and his causes the same reaction in her, though he doesn't know it, and neither of them is aware of Arthur getting up to cut in on Sirius' dance with his wife to show the younger wizard 'how it's really done.'

"I did," Remus says.

A swirl of steam rises from the goblet they hold between them, and he is at once frustrated by the illusion of a barrier between them and glad of it, because her eyes, holding his, also contain something which tilts his world on its axis, and he is certain he would fall right over the edge if she touched him fully. What he does not consider is that she will balance him, and as he flails to keep himself steady, his mind reverts to a time when the mere touch of a girl's fingertips to his had the power to make him go weak in the knees.

Which was when he was around fourteen and even greater impulsive idiot than he is now.

Or not.

Remus has acted on many a stupid whim, but it is difficult to imagine anything more ill-thought than gulping down a goblet of Wolfsbane Potion, standing stock still for a moment as Tonks watches him in breathless anticipation, looking as if she can see the stuff making its way into his bloodstream, then letting his fingers slacken around the goblet, which shatters on the stone floor and brings the dancing to a halt, as his other hand clutches at his heart while he staggers backward into the cupboards.

"Oh, great Merlin!" cries Molly, as Tonks goes dead white and also falls back against the cupboards, hands flying to her mouth.

Immediately, Remus realises his mistake.

"I'm okay!"

He lets go of his jumper and springs forward to support Tonks, who looks on the brink of fainting. He never imagined she'd fall for it, never thought she would do anything other than roll her eyes at him and call him a great daft idiot, breaking the unsettling tension between them...No - he never _thought_ at all. If he had, she wouldn't be trembling in his arms.

"It was just a joke," he tries to reassure her. "I was only kidding. I'm sorry."

In the background, Molly gives a shaky laugh and thanks Merlin as she leans against Arthur, and Sirius howls and begs for a Pensieve so that Tonks can see her face. But she will not want to see her face, and Remus wants his memory modified so that he will not be haunted by that white mask of horror, or the dark eyes rounding and pooling just before they narrow against the tears, and then she is pushing him away and turning, running, _stumbling_ , helter-skelter up the basement stairs.

 _Oh, come and stir my cauldron,_

 _And if you do it right,_

 _I'll boil you up some hot, strong love,_

 _To keep you warm-_

No longer laughing, Sirius flicks off the wireless and says, "Mate. You'd better go try and stir her cauldron right-"

He goes on, 'as you've stirred it spectacularly _wrong_ ', but Remus is already taking the stairs two at a time, calling for Tonks to wait, though she doesn't, nor is there any sound from up ahead of him except a heavy _thump_ , and as he rounds the corner into the corridor, she is picking herself off the floor after falling over the troll foot umbrella stand and is pulling the coat rack over on top of herself in the attempt to grab her woven handbag off of it.

He uses his wand to right the coat rack and frees her bag, which she's only managed to tangle around the hook. "Tonks, I'm sorry-"

"You don't have to apologise." She snatches her bag from him and slings it over her left shoulder, settling the pouch on her opposite hip.

His hands fall to his sides. "I do. I shouldn't have joked. It was in very poor taste-"

"Maybe." She shrugs. "Or maybe I'm just being stupid because I got so wound up about that potion." She shrugs again. "I'm sorry. Tomorrow I'll try to be a normal human being with a sense of humour."

Turning away from him, Tonks reaches for the doorknob, but Remus catches her hand and stops her from opening the door.

"Wait...You really were afraid of poisoning me?"

"Wouldn't you be?"

"Yes, but then, we have already established that I got a Troll in Potions, whereas you've got a N.E.W.T, so I really don't understand why you would doubt your ability-"

"It's not about the bloody potion."

The quietness of her voice knocks him for six, and as he watches her watching _him_ try and puzzle out what it _is_ about, it hits him.

But not before her hand moves beneath his, turning the doorknob.

And before he can fully process this realisation, or say or do anything about it, she steps out into the darkness and bids him goodnight.


	2. Chapter 2

**II.**

Her pledge to be a normal human being with a sense of humour the next day is undermined rather early, and on several levels:

One: the notion is fundamentally flawed, as no one calls Nymphadora Tonks _normal_ , except for Remus, though she doesn't know that.

Two: none of the Aurors has much of a sense of humour at the moment, as Rufus Scrimgeour is circling the conference table, his golden eyes glaring over the rims of his spectacles, regarding the members of his department as prey, growling out his displeasure with the search for Sirius Black, which passed the one year mark three months ago.

Kingsley sits across the wide oaken table from Tonks, arms folded across his broad chest, looking cool and collected as always with his hoop earring; as his jaw works slowly at a piece of gum, his lips curve slightly upward as Scrimgeour blasts him, in particular, for Black's still being at large.

Kingsley's sense of _irony_ , however, which he shares with Tonks in a brief meeting of their dark eyes, is not precisely the same as a sense of _humour_. Of the pair of them, he stands to fall further if his circumvention of justice comes to light, though Tonks is the one who cannot meet her boss' gaze without fearing he will use Legilimency on her and discover the secret she and Kingsley are keeping from the government they serve, though at least she can pretend that's down to the fact that her eyes are barely open at all, which brings her to point three:

It is also supremely difficult to laugh _or_ be normal when your sleep is plagued by dreams of the bloke you fancy dropping dead at your feet because you poisoned him, while that greasy git Snape watches with an oily leer.

No: as Nymphadora Tonks struggles to keep awake during the morning Auror meeting, she is no more likely to demonstrate normalcy or a sense of humour when she goes to Grimmauld Place to brew Remus' second dose of Wolfsbane Potion than she was last night. She is not even comforted by the thought that at least she doesn't have to worry about her continual awkwardness putting Remus off of her, as in her mind his oblivion to her feelings for him must mean that he's never thought of her in a romantic way. And why would he? She let him see how nervous she is about making his potion, any room he _might_ have had for fancying her can only have been replaced by fear that she will be the death of him. Most probably he will owl her today asking her not to bother with the next batch of potion, as transforming with Padfoot is far more reliable and trustworthy than risking a green-haired clumsy girl poisoning him.

Even if he did say lovely things about her qualifying for NEWT-level Potions.

Placing him on a pedestal as she does and projecting her own insecurities, she thinks that a man couldn't be that effortlessly smooth and easily flirtatious if he weren't sure of how a girl felt about him. It never occurs to her that Remus doesn't see himself as necessarily fanciable, and so doesn't expect up-and-coming law enforcement officers to look past his being an unemployable social outcast -- and of course a Dark Creature -- and think him a great catch. To Tonks, there is no logical explanation except that Remus doesn't fancy her back because he is such a consummate professional that he knows how stupid it is to date colleagues. Which is the most illogical thing she could think, considering that Remus _does_ fancy her, and the Order of the Phoenix, historically, is made up of couples. Or makes people couples.

"I mean it," says Scrimgeour, hands clasped behind his back, fully aware that his limp does not in the least diminish the prowling, predatory effect of his gait. "The next one of you who hands a report across my desk including the phrase _Black sighting turns out to be a false lead_ will be begging Amelia Bones to let them empty wastebaskets in MLE!"

Kingsley catches Tonks' eye again, communicating to her with a subtle roll of his eyes that he thinks Scrimgeour's talking out of his arse, and that even if he isn't, _he_ doesn't care, because a custodial position at the Ministry's still a position at the Ministry and that's all the Order needs -- for them to be here, where they can keep an ear open.

Then his gaze is drawn by a pale lilac paper aeroplane breezing through the open office door behind Tonks, aiming straight for the back of her head.

That is, until she wonders what Kingsley's looking at, turns to see for herself, and gets the pointy end of the personal memo right in her eye.

Which doesn't do a great deal for her sense of humour -- though the other Aurors snigger. (With the exception, of course, of Dawlish, who shakes his head and resents Alastor Moody's favouritism that got such an awkward slip of a girl on the squad.)

"Sadists, the lot of you," Tonks mutters, which makes even Scrimgeour chuckle before going on with his lecture, and as she unfolds the wings of her aeroplane memo, the rest of the Aurors (again, except for Dawlish), watch her lurid green eyebrows knit together on her deeply furrowed brow and hope she isn't the recipient of bad news, because her youthful vivacity and vibrant hair colours brighten the Auror office even when Scrimgeour's on the rampage and Magical Maintenance insist on setting the windows to reflect a gloomy, drizzly day.

They will be relieved to learn it's not bad news that makes Tonks look like that, though their best interrogation tactics won't get out of her what it _is:_

 _Dear Rainbow,_

 _I can't wait until tonight to see you again. Meet me for lunch? I'll be waiting outside The Lyceum Tavern._

 _Romulus x_

"I want you on that straight away, Tonks," Scrimgeour orders, and without hesitation she replies, "Yes, Sir," even though she hasn’t the foggiest idea what he wants her on, except that she'd put a couple of galleons on him not wanting her on a date -- or not-date -- with Remus Lupin.

When Scrimgeour adjourns the meeting, she and Kingsley gravitate naturally to each other, she to ask him what she missed while reading her note, as she really does want to keep being an Auror and not a janitor, and he to fulfil his curiosity about what she was reading when she missed Scrimgeour telling her to go down to Ottery-St. Catchpole and plead with Xenophilius Lovegood to stop printing crackpot theories about Black's aliases.

"Sirius and I've come up with a brilliant new one for you to feed Lovegood," Kingsley whispers as they walk to her cubicle. "'Sirius Black' is actually an alias for Stubby Boardman of the Hobgoblins."

"Poor Stubby," says Tonks with a snort, "only protecting his ears from more errant turnips, and then gets thrown into Azkab-- _Oi!_ Give that back, Shacklebolt!"

But Kingsley holds the letter he snatched from her out of her reach and sticks his other arm out to push her out of reach. His brown eyes scan the neat script, then his low chuckle rumbles out of him like the roll of a kettle drum

"No, Tonks, you definitely weren't flirting with Remus at Privet Drive--"

"I wasn't!"

"You really are a total professional at all times--"

"I am!" She takes advantage of his laughter and grabs the note back from him. "I’m so bloody professional that I'm going to meet _Romulus_ at The Lyceum Tavern and give him a very professional lecture entitled 'Alliteration Does Not a Subtle Code Name Make'."

"Maybe the fact that Rainbow and Romulus are so obvious is what makes them good code names."

"So you'll be pleased as punch when he starts sending _you_ messages addressed to Royal?"

"Only if he follows 'Dear Royal' with how he can't wait till tonight to see me and asks me for a lunch date."

"It's not a date!" Tonks tears the paper in two, then the halves in two again. "It's stupid to go out with colleagues, and Remus might be crap at code names, but I'm sure he knows _that_ , and I'm also sure this is code for him needing to talk to me about something I'm doing for him."

"Of course," says Kingsley with a smirk. "The little kiss is definitely code for you _doing something_ for him."

Glowering, Tonks tosses the little scraps of note into the wastebasket (annoyingly, the bit with _Romulus x_ remained intact and falls so that she can see it) and Vanishes the lot.

"It's _not_ a date."

Because Remus _doesn't_ fancy her.

* * *

Of all the women approaching The Lyceum Tavern, outside of which Remus waits on a weathered wooden bench, the one he least expects to reveal herself as Tonks-in-disguise is the tall thin blonde who appears to be about his own age. Her outfit (a red polka-dot sundress, floppy straw hat with a red and white-striped band, and a large pair of white plastic sunglasses) is a very Tonksish ensemble, indeed; but Tonks would not be slowing her stride and adjusting the bag on her shoulder in a gesture of trepidation.

Regardless of what Remus thinks, the tall thin blonde who appears to be about his own age _is_ Tonks, and he would have known this had he seen her emerge from the telephone box at the end of the street, where his gaze has been glued since he arrived here half an hour ago. But he didn't see her do so, as at the exact moment she stepped out, a rotund Muggle police officer lumbered by eating a cheese and pickle sandwich, blocking the view of the phone box, and then drew Remus' attention as he dropped said sandwich and moved (not very quickly) to stop a vagrant from stealing an elderly woman's handbag.

(In point of fact, the policeman had been too busy enjoying his sandwich to notice the attempted theft, but Tonks, never fully off-duty, saw and discreetly Petrified the man, cast a Sticking Charm on the handbag and a Sonorous on the lady's voice so that the police officer could actually hear her cry, 'Stop! Thief!')

But Remus, not having seen any of this, assumes that the tall thin blonde about his own age really is a woman in her own skin, especially as she seems to be looking at the pub in trepidation because it is not posh enough for her (The Marquess of Anglessey up on Russell Street is more her fashion), and Tonks eats lunch here at least three times a week, because it's so close to the Ministry.

True though that may be, what he doesn't realise is that while Tonks has eaten here at least three times a week for the past four years since she moved to London for Auror training, she's never given any thought to the name of the pub. Seeing Remus sat there beneath a sign that reads THE LYCEUM TAVERN, she recalls her nightmares and relives the sensation of being surrounded and suffocated by her own screams, and she really, desperately doesn't want to be here till she's sorted whatever this is that's making her obsess over this business of Remus being a werewolf, when it's never been an issue before.

It does occur to him, however, as the blonde's sunglasses slip down her aquiline nose and show her eyes to be fixed on the Lyceum's sign, that if this _were_ Tonks, he might consider the name of the pub as a potential cause for the sort of feelings to arise that make women fiddle with their purse straps. She is, after all, already a bit disconcerted by this business of brewing Wolfsbane Potion for him.

Rubbing his suddenly damp palms on the shiny-with-wear knees of his grey trousers, he considers whether he ought to get up and meet her at the phone box and suggest someplace less...well, _wolfish_...Not that his name itself isn't more wolfish than just about anything could be, or that the whole point of him meeting her is The Werewolf Thing and the preferred attitude is fear. Before he can change his mind, the blonde whips off her sunglasses, looks him directly in the eyes, puts her lips together, and whistles the opening bars of "Somewhere, Over the Rainbow".

He feels like a complete and utter prat for not recognising her, and thinks, with no small amount of mortification, that she'll never want to be with him if she finds out he didn't recognise her like this, even if The Werewolf Thing doesn't drive her away.

She does know it, because Remus would have greeted her if he recognised her, and she's glad he didn't, because what kind of spy would she be if she couldn't fool her friends -- or maybe more than friends -- as well as her foes?

Even so, his face breaks out in a broad grin at her way of identifying herself to him, and because she smiles, too, the wide grin and twinkling eyes of Nymphadora Tonks shining on the face of--

"Doris Perkiss," she says, sticking out her hand to shake his, but somehow managing to nearly take off his nose as she wobbles, leading him to assume she's wearing heels, though he is wrong there, as well.

"Bloody size nines!" she says, glowering down at the offending white leather flip-flops. "Honestly, morphing can be so damn discombobulat--"

She stops because Remus, dazed with relief by this un-thought of explanation for her behaviour -- not wary of him, just adjusting to a strange body, which he should have considered, enduring that sort of thing on a regular basis himself -- is driven to impulsiveness again, which prompts him (not to fake being poisoned this time) to not only shake her hand, but to kiss her on the cheek, as well.

Her fingers stiffen slightly in his, but apart from that, her body language communicates nothing to him of what she's thinking about this bit of affection, and he pulls away before she fully registers that his lips are on her skin, so she doesn't have a clear thought about the bit of affection, herself.

"Oh," he says, stepping back from her and tugging at the hair at his nape. "I beg your pardon, but I thought you said 'Dora says give her a kiss'."

Her lips twitch, and the blue eyes of Doris Perkiss darken into something closer to Tonks' own, shining with her characteristic twinkle. "Did you?"

"No. I heard you say, quite plainly, 'Doris Perkiss'."

"Then..." She stops, and catches her lower lip between her teeth, and Remus knows women, knows _Tonks_ , well enough to recognise the telltale sign that she doesn't wish to say anything more, but his blood is still thrumming through him at the memory of his mouth on her skin, regardless of what her blood is doing as a result, and he cannot stop himself from leaning in a bit and asking flirtatiously, "What?"

Tonks opens her mouth and for a second looks as if she will tell him, fully intends to tell him, even, but she shakes her head and presses her lips together. Remus wants to tell her anyway that he kissed her because he _wanted_ to kiss her, that he's so pleased she's meeting him here even though she's got to do it in the guise of Doris Perkiss.

Before he can, Tonks nods at the tavern door. "Shall we go in? I haven't got much time."

Remus' heart thuds, once, then sinks into his stomach, disappointment attaching itself like a weight as he assumes that _she_ assumes he means this to be a business lunch.

There _is_ business to discuss, but the business is rather contingent upon a relationship that is more than professional, and vice-versa.

If only he knew that she has made no such assumption, is absolutely confused by his note and whether it's code or more or both, and at the moment is not puzzling it out because she's far too busy mentally flogging herself for being brusque with him just because she's nervous.

But as Remus mechanically gets the door for her, though, she grins, eyes impish slits that make him picture her heart-shaped face. "Xenophilius Lovegood's expecting me for an interview about how I was having a romantic dinner with Stubby Boardman -- AKA Sirius Black -- on the night of the thirty-first of October, 1981."

Remus laughs as he follows her inside to the bar, his heart lighter and rising up nearer to where it's supposed to be. "Does poor Stubby know you're now on a lunch date with his best mate Romulus?" he teases, then asks the barmaid for a Coke and fish and chips. Tonks asks for the same, only wants her Coke with cherry syrup in it, and Remus is about to change his drink order because that sounds tasty and he's up for a bit of an adventure, but the barmaid has already scurried to the kitchen and Tonks, plopping down on a bar stool, says, "If your little note was a test in Stealth, I'd have to give you a T for Romulus--"

"Romulus begins with an R. And you're complaining about someone else's name other than your own? This is a red-letter day."

" _Remus_ ," she says his name with no little amount of indignation, and tries to go on, but then the barmaid arrives with their lunches, and after ascertaining that the upstairs room is empty and will ensure them privacy, and Tonks is so focused on getting up the narrow staircase without dropping her food or drink that she still does not give him her lecture on code names.

Despite all the room and the freedom it provides for them to talk openly about Order work, Remus sits beside Tonks in the booth rather than across the table, and when he does this, her expression indicates code names have gone clean out of her head.

"If you haven't much time," he says, stretching his right arm along the back of the seat, which makes her inhale a bit of cherry-flavoured Coke, though she squelches the cough so that Remus doesn't notice the effect his nearness has on her (the dim pub lights conceal her blush), "we'd best get down to business."

"Right." Her voice is tight, but Remus attributes it to professionalism rather than disappointment. "What do you need me to do?"

Glancing over his shoulder to ensure they really are alone, which would bring a tear of pride to Alastor Moody's eye, he leans in to her and says, quietly, "Don't mention it to a soul, first of all. Dumbledore feels this assignment need not be any more public than is absolutely necessary for me to get the information I require for it."

He watches her chew on a chip at his implication, and wonders how easy it is for her to circumvent the law she's trained to uphold, while she recalls how offended she was that she was given so much grief about whether a Metamorphmagus could be trusted with such a high-security position as Auror, and here she is, a year later, doing exactly what some suspected she would do.

Swallowing, she nods. "Of course."

"Part of me hates to drag you into it. It will not be pleasant. It may, in fact, be distressing. It could even be dangerous. But apart from your particular talent, _Miss Perkiss,_ making you the obvious candidate, you are already indirectly involved by brewing my potion."

Her warm fingers close around his hand in his lap, which he only just realises has been shredding the edge of his paper napkin. He looks up and sees his reflection in the eyes she has morphed back to her own dark ones, though the rest of her face remains in disguise.

"Whatever you need of me, I'll do it."

He could kiss her, but settles for squeezing her hand. There will be time for kisses later -- he hopes, and so does she, seeing his eyes dart briefly to her lips -- and _now_ is certainly not the time, not when she's offering everything without knowing how much that means.

So he tells her, and she stands by her initial agreement, though her eyes, as expected, fill with curiosity. If the whys disturb her, however, Remus reads nothing of the sort in her eyes or on the face of Doris Perkiss.

"How is it you weren't Sorted into Gryffindor?" he asks, and she blushes a little, and releases his hand, but wears a pleased smile as she eats the last of her chips.

She tells him that she gave the Sorting Hat one of the more difficult times it's ever had, considering each House for her, and that she must have sat on that bloody stool for nearly a quarter of an hour while it tried to figure out who she is, and to this day she's convinced she's a Hufflepuff simply because she fits better there than anywhere else; all this she says aloud, but in her heart she asks Remus why he can't see how loyal she is to him. At least his faith that she possesses courage worthy of Gryffindor vindicates her inner conviction that she is unafraid.

It also emboldens her to ask, "Why didn't you just ask me about this when I come to Headquarters?"

He smiles over the rim of his glass. "I told you -- I couldn't wait to see you."

* * *

"If you saw me on the street," Tonks asks, her cauldron full of Wolfsbane Potion ingredients balanced on her hip as she clings for dear life to the mouldy handrail in the attempt to descend the basement kitchen stairs in stilettos and a pencil skirt without breaking her neck, "would you know me?"

Remus, though he instantly pushes his chair back from the table, stands and strides to take the cauldron from her, offering a balancing hand on her elbow, hesitates before answering, his eyes darting to Sirius at the table for help he does not receive as the latter merely folds his arms across his chest, tilts his chair back on two legs, and cocks his head.

"Moony's got a lot of experience with giving women wrong answers to this sort of question, but Metamorphmagi present a whole new set of challenges. This should be fun."

He waggles his eyebrows to such comical effect that Tonks has to laugh even though she's pretty sure she could have a lot of fun winding the pair of them up -- and Merlin knows Remus deserves it after that fake poisoning. But he looks so genuinely sheepish right now that she can't, in good conscience, engage in turnabout.

Especially since he said he couldn't wait to see her. And even though he hasn't technically seen _her_ today, she had a feeling after he kissed Doris Perkiss' cheek, that he somehow made her feel the kiss deep down, in her own skin. His touch on her elbow is like that now, even though he is so certain he's offended her.

"I mean," she clarifies, giving him a reassuring smile, "who do I look like?"

"Mercy Burbage, of Werewolf Support Services."

She asks whether she's got the height and build right, as she never had a chance to pop down to the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to have a look at Mercy Burbage herself, and is basing this morph off a headshot in Mercy's personal file, guessing on the petite proportions. Remus reassures her that she's a dead-ringer and looks impressed, but then the creases on his forehead become more deeply etched.

"What?" she asks.

"I didn't expect you'd need to go undercover, as you'll be going in after your guard duty. Surely no one will be working at four in the morning?"

"Working where?" Sirius lets his chair thump onto all four legs. "What are you going undercover for?"

Remus and Tonks exchange a look that makes Sirius bristle, though he tries not to let them see, and makes a concerted effort at keeping his voice even, as always suits Remus so well. Only he doesn't quite manage to keep the snark out of his tone as he says, "Sharing secrets now, are we?"

Returning to her natural form (with yellow-tipped black spiky hair, because she's feeling a bit violent, which looks horrific with her pin-striped skirt and tailored chiffon blouse), Tonks opens her mouth in a hot reply, but Remus squeezes her elbow gently in a signal to let him handle this. She nods, and he releases her; she takes her cauldron to the workspace, transfigures Mercy Burbage's outfit to a tatty t-shirt and jeans she won't mind spilling potion things on, and sets to work on Remus' second dose, while he makes tea and casually reminds Sirius that Dumbledore frequently gives assignments to which only one or two Order members may be a party.

"Lupin, party of two, is it?" Sirius drawls. "Your moon-addled mind's already made me a party to something involving Werewolf Support Services, so why don't you just tell me the rest?"

"You've been complaining about boredom. Wouldn't you prefer me to leave it up to your imagination?"

"Oh, _bite me!"_

"I think you know that would hold rather dire consequences," says Remus, not seeing Tonks shudder behind him, though Sirius does, and a rush of regret swells up in him that his thoughtlessness has drawn attention to Moony's furry little problem in front of the last person he wants to think about it. The guilt ebbs after a couple of seconds in which he considers that Moony didn't _have_ to say that, and that if any attention has been drawn to his furry little problem, it's his own damn fault.

Of course, he doesn't realise that drawing attention is precisely what Remus intends to do, and if he did, Sirius might be more interested in that titbit of psychology than in the effects of isolation and idleness on his own. As it is, Tonks doesn't miss the sulkiness that slips into his voice as he goes on, though she tunes out the actual words, focusing on the aconite she's mincing. It's strange to her that last night she was terrified of putting in too much and killing Remus, while now she fears adding too little and _him_ doing the killing.

She studies his figure from behind, ignoring, for once, the bum she always thinks is rather cute: the thin frame, the weary lines on his face beneath greying hair, the ill pallor of his skin, the conservative grey-green jumper and light brown trousers, the non-aggressive slack-shouldered stance even in the face of Sirius' badgering (and cheap shots, which she didn't hear), Remus' own mild replies, uttered in that quiet, slightly hoarse voice which she can't imagine being raised.

Absurd as it is that this man requires a complex potion to subdue him, no horror novel about werewolves contains such a chillingly unexpected antagonist.

Tonks adds the aconite and stirs the potion over a magical flame, just as Sirius says, "I assume you're not keeping Tonks in the dark about where to come and stir your cauldron?"

Ladling a draught into a goblet, Tonks looks quizzically up at the two wizards, who see she's missed most of their conversation. Remus, intent on removing his tea bag from his cup, lifts his eyes up to her.

"I neglected to mention that I will not be working out of Grimmauld Place this week. You will find where to Apparate among the information you retrieve."

That sets Sirius off again, but he stops when Remus drinks his potion, and watches breathlessly, just as his cousin does, though he because he's afraid Remus won't be faking poison stopping his heart this time, while she pictures fang and claw and a maw open wide in a feral, blood-curdling howl.

Of course each expectation is as unrealistic and ridiculous as the other, but both their hearts miss a beat as Remus' sandy brows knit, and he squints into his goblet with a _hmm_.

"What?" they ask at once, she moving to him, Sirius standing, his eyes flashing Tonks a look that says he'll kill her if her potion-brewing kills his best mate.

"Oh, nothing," says Remus, giving her a grin as the tip of his tongue darts out to lick his lips, tasting, and Tonks' heart still won't resume beating. "Only -- is this Severus' Wolfsbane Potion recipe?"

"Nnoo..." Tonks reaches out a shaky hand for the card she made with a Duplication Spell from the issue of _Popular Potions_ in which the recipe was originally published. "It's Damocles Belby's. Why? What's different?"

"The taste. It's not foul. Well -- not _as_ foul," he adds with a bit of a grimace -- though his hands are instantly on her shoulders, his fingers brushing her skin at the edges of her t-shirt neck, soothing her even as her mind recalls everything she learnt in Potions class about taste indicating changes in a potion's magical properties. She believes Remus, with his Troll in Potions, over bald facts when he says, "Don't worry."

And then she doesn't have to ignore facts, because Remus is telling her that Snape took advantage of that poor mark and told him that sugar makes Wolfsbane Potion useless. Which it does, according to Damocles Belby, but that's not the last word on the subject:

 _Trial dosages were said to be foul-tasting, and while sugar or honey renders the potion useless, elderflower and honeysuckle are known effective sweeteners._

"I always thought Professor Snape was a right creep," says Tonks, "but that's the most childish thing I ever heard."

"As childish as the thing that started his grudge, wouldn't you say, Moony?"

As Sirius reaches into the biscuit barrel, he and Remus exchange a glance that is rich with history and humour, which piques Tonks' curiosity. Joining Sirius at the table, she asks, "What did you pair of Marauding bastards do to make Snape hate you?"

"Oh, that would fill a book longer than _The History of Magic,_ " Remus tells her, taking the seat at the foot of the table and stretching out his legs to rest in the empty chair beside her, nudging her thigh with his toe, perhaps in a flirtatious gesture, though Tonks can't be sure. "Sirius refers to an incident in our fourth year which cemented Severus' especial loathing of me as an individual."

He still wears a small grin, but his eyes are on his teacup, and his voice detaches from the word _individual,_ which makes it clear, in the context of Wolfsbane Potion-brewing that this is a story about Snape's especial loathing for Remus as an individual _because he is a werewolf_ , and Tonks' blood runs cold.

"I reckon I owe you an apology for having to choke down that potion," says Sirius.

"As if Severus is the sort of fellow who adds elderflowers to sweeten to taste," says Remus with a shrug.

This wipes the guilt from Sirius' face, and he kicks out a chair and sits backward on it. "You don't mind if I tell?"

Remus waves his hand and drinks his tea. "By all means. I always appreciate a refresher myself, as I don't remember any of it."

It is their calm, their jokeyness, that disturbs Tonks more than the words that come out of Sirius mouth, without dramatics, condensing in a few words what could have been the most horrifying incident to occur on Hogwarts grounds since the Chamber of Secrets was opened the first time. And Remus, who might have lost his own life, or been fed to Dementors, or be locked up forever with the guilt of killing another person -- or worse, just sits there, unperturbed, unresentful that his _best mate_ used him to teach Snape a lesson about 'keeping his great beak of a nose in his own damn business.' Snape must wake in the night, all in a cold sweat, to this day; no wonder he tells first years how to kill werewolves.

"Tonks?"

She jumps as Remus' fingers come to rest on her knee, and looks up to find that he has swung his feet to the floor and slid into the chair beside her, and is watching her intently, his features etched with concern. She averts her eyes, afraid he will read her reaction as fear of him when it is not, though the instant she looks away she realises it probably gives that impression anyway.

"Sorry," she says, and reaches to pat his hand, though she changes her mind at the last minute, and can't bear to meet his eyes, for fear of seeing them flicker with hurt, which they do. Her chair screeches as she pushes back from the table, and rattles as she stands, or stumbles, to her feet. "Zoned out there -- I'm knackered. Mind if I kip in your room till my shift?"

"By all means," Remus answers, blinking as if he's come into an unexpectedly bright room.

Before Sirius can ask if she wants Remus to kip with her, she Apparates to his room -- though not before Molly comes down into the kitchen just in time to hear the reverberating _CRACK_ and shrieks at the twins that they might use the stairs like normal people.

* * *

It is not Molly's shriek that fills Remus ears when _he_ Apparates upstairs after _The Witching Hour_ , the waxing moon pulling at him already, his limbs leaden weights at the mere thought of climbing three flights of stairs. Almost the instant he materialises in front of his door, he knocks and murmurs Tonks' name.

"NO!" she screams from within, startling him back from the door, and for a moment he stands there, hand pressed to his chest, feeling his heart palpitate wildly through his thin jumper, unsure what he's just heard but fearing it is rejection -- which he half-expects will be the result of all of this, though he never thought this soon.

"No! Please, don't! It's me! You know me! Please!"

Relieved and alarmed all at once, he turns the doorknob, leans his weight into the old door which always sticks in the jamb, pushes it open, strides into the darkened bedroom, flicks his wand to light the bedside lamp.

Tonks snaps awake at this, sitting bolt upright in the four-poster bed, wand to hand before Remus can see her reach for it. Her clothes are askew and with the twisted sheets tell a story of her writhing and thrashing to escape whatever haunted her in her sleep; her hair, dishwater blonde, her natural colour, though he doesn't know it, is plastered to her forehead, and there are dark spots on the front of her t-shirt from the sweat-soaked bra underneath.

He steps toward her.

She shrinks back, though he takes no offence, knowing that she is not yet fully aware of her real surroundings, still seeing the dream face that terrorised her. Not realising that that is _his_ face, he approaches, murmuring, "It's okay, Dora. It's only me. You were dreaming."

As she stares at him, her chest heaving, he does not imagine that her heart is pulsing with the repeated thought: _It's only Remus._

Only Remus with his greying hair and his kind blue eyes and his hands, one of which gives his wand a neat little flick to Conjure a glass of water. Only Remus' long fingers, delicately, almost elegantly, curved around the glass. The claws in her nightmares could not be farther removed from those hands, nor could those gently smiling lips curl in a snarl to bare fangs.

 _Only Remus._

Little by little, the heaving of her chest lessens, and the dream-haze clears from her dark eyes before they dart sheepishly down as her wand hand drops to her side.

"Sorry," she croaks.

"There's nothing to be sorry for."

Remus gives her the water, which she gulps down, thinking that he's right, she doesn't need to apologise for being afraid of him because she is _not_ afraid of him. She might have dreamt of claws tearing her apart as fangs sink into her jugular, all while Snape, laughing, looks on, like some sort of voyeur, but it's Snape she's afraid of, Snape the ex-Death Eater. _He_ is the stuff nightmares are made of, and it's him and all the talk of him these past two nights that made her have those nightmares, and it can't have been Remus, because the same man who's now Conjuring her a wet flannel to sponge off her face and neck can't turn into a monster, even if he is a werewolf. She is _not_ afraid of him.

There is no changing her mind when she's set herself against something -- a quality which makes her such an asset to the Order. If Remus himself were to tell her she _is_ afraid, that it is okay to be, and that he, in fact, _wants_ her to be afraid of him if they are to try more-than-friends, because if she does not demonstrate the appropriate amount of fear he cannot trust her to be careful, the odds are very good she will continue to stand her ground, and he, though frustrated, will love her for it anyway.

Drawing a shuddering breath into the cool cloth covering her face, she asks, muffled, "Did I wake anyone? What time is it anyway?"

"No, I don't think so. I just came up to wake you for your shift. I didn’t hear a thing before then."

She looks up at the bedside clock and mutters about not having meant to sleep for so long as she disentangles herself from the sheets and scoots to the edge of the bed. Seeing she's about to get up, but more than that, noting how pale she is, her eyes rimmed with red, Remus catches her arm to hold her where she is.

"Remus--"

"Are you sure you're up to it?"

"Of course I am. It was just a bad dream. A stupid dream."

"About what?"

"I don't remember anymore. It's already gone. Remus, I've got to _go_."

She pulls against his grasp on her arm, and though he knows she's not being honest, he has to release her. But she stays put at the edge of the bed beside him, even relaxes into his touch as he rubs soothing circles over her spine.

Sighing, her gaze drops to her wand in her hand. "Why is your wand never on you in those kinds of dreams?"

"It's horrible, isn't it?"

They sit quietly for a minute or two, during which his hand drifts up to her shoulder, and then, after another moment, he slides his arm around her and she leans her head against him, then wraps her arms around his waist as she burrows her face into his jumper.

"Tonks," he says, the thought that distracted him from the nightly wireless programme recurring as he mulls over what could have got her into such a state. "That story Sirius told--"

He feels her sharply indrawn breath against him, and he rubs his hand over her tensed shoulders.

"He doesn't think it's amusing, or a harmless prank--"

"Could've fooled me--"

"It just wasn't a big deal. Nothing happened. He and James rowed, and Dumbledore, of course, pointed out what _could have_ happened to Severus, and...to me. But that's the point, Sirius never intended anything more malicious than for Severus to wet himself, and honestly I could never get too worked up about something less real to me than a dream. I didn't have my own mind that night. I remember nothing. I have never remembered it, not even the morning after. And that is one of my objectives for this assignment. It is imperative that I learn just how much of my own mind Wolfsbane Potion allows me to keep, and, in the presence of humans, how much of the werewolf's mind remains."

Tonks blinks. Then slides off the bed, running a hand through her tangled hair. "Sorry, but I’m not sure I see the connection between your potion and the prank."

Remus lets out a puff of laughter. "No...I am not sure I do, either."

"Then why'd you say it all together?"

"Because I thought the prank story might have upset you, and the other bit needed to be said." The bed groans as he pushes himself onto his feet. "Tonks, if you are not up to this, I can ask--"

"I said I'd do it. I wouldn't if I didn't think I was up to it. I was sorted Hufflepuff because if there's one thing I'm consistent about, it's not quitting."

"I didn't mean to suggest--"

"If you'll excuse me," she says, glancing in the mirror over the bureau, which makes a sound of disgust, and she changes her hair to a midnight blue, shoulder-length style. "I've got an Invisibility Cloak to find so I can start my--"

She stops because Remus is just drawing the slightly shimmering Cloak out of his pocket.

"Ta," she says, colouring. "And--"

She stops again, and looks down as if she's considering something, which she is, though it's more checking an impulse, and in the end she gives in to it, not wanting him to think his earlier impulsive affection is unwelcome, or that she is afraid of him, which she definitely is _not_ , and rises up on her toes, her palm opening over his scratchy stubble, and kisses his cheek.

He is completely gobsmacked, and understandably so, given her defensiveness since he walked in on her, but of course he's pleased and lets her see it in his grin.

"You know, I think _ta_ suffices for an Invisibility Cloak."

She's bent, tugging on her tall black boots. "That wasn't for the Invisibility Cloak."

"Oh?"

Her hair hangs in curtains, hiding her face. "It was for not making me feel stupid about having bad dreams."

His smile fading, Remus stoops and cups her cheek, drawing her face up to meet her eye. "You're talking to a man who's hardly had a pleasant dream since he was six."

When she has gone to do what he asked her to do for him, he sinks onto his bed, asking himself even though there is no turning back now, whether it is right to give her his nightmares of claw and fang, not knowing that he already has.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviewers get an invitation from Remus for a lunch date, addressed to the flirty codename of your choice. ;)


	3. Chapter 3

This is the house of last night's nightmares, which, having haunted Tonks through another day, makes her think, upon Apparating to it, that she is still asleep, still dreaming.

In her dream, though, the front windows were not bricked over as they are in actuality, as they are in the photograph she saw before coming here, before dreaming of here.

 _Here_ is Monkshood Croft, Yorkshire - the cottage where John and Sylvia Lupin lived quietly, researching and writing, respectively, and where they never gave a second thought to letting their small son play alone on the moor, making friends with the ponies and sheep and other animals that roamed freely about the country. The Lupins did not fear for young Remus' safety in the wild, and certainly they did not think a hair on his head could be harmed within the walls of their home, surrounded by the purple flowers Sylvia let grow where they pleased.

And yet it was in those blossoms that danger lurked, laying in wait to visit the iniquity of the father upon the child.

The wind picks up suddenly, rustling the flowers like waves, and Tonks hugs her cauldron tightly as the wuthering recalls the howls from her dreams. But there is no wolf hiding in the blossoms below the bricked-over window now; she is not dreaming.

She orders her legs to move, and her feet obey, stepping forward and approaching the house of crumbling brick with the thatched roof, rotted stoop, and lopsidedly hung front door over and under which the soft glow of firelight emanates. The light assures her that she is not alone here, that Remus is inside and, in fact waiting for her at the kitchen table just in the door. Remus, who woke her last night, rescued her from the nightmare with a few gently rasped words.

Though buoyed by his nearness, her dreams hover closer. Each time her cloak catches in the brambles growing over the path, she jumps, her breath catching in her throat and her heart pounding as if it is trying to break free of her chest and escape the werewolf's claws and fangs that snag and snap at her clothes.

In her struggle to free herself from one particularly tenacious shrub, the weight of her cauldron, as she shifts it to one arm so she can tug at her cloak with the other, throws her off-balance. The treacherous gorse releases her, and she hurtles to the ground.

Her cauldron hits the cottage's front step with a clang that alerts Remus, within, to her arrival, and the sounds of chair legs scraping against floorboards, followed by footfalls, very close to the door, make her scramble to pack up the potion-making supplies that spilt out in her fall. She freezes on her hands and knees when she reaches for the aconite plants, her eyes locking on one of the purple flowers growing in front of the house.

With a terrible squeal, not unlike the scream of a small, frightened animal, the door swings open.

Remus steps out to see Tonks still sprawled on the ground, fighting with her tangled cloak to get at her wand, which ought to have been in her hand if she felt a moment's alarm, Mad-Eye would say, though she stops as soon as she realises that it is Remus. Her face burns with humiliation at being found on her hands and knees like this, by _him_ , though it is too dark out here for Remus to see it, and of course he is so accustomed to her making this sort of entrance into Grimmauld Place that it never occurs to him what imaginations brought her to this current undignified pose.

"Hello," he says, bending to offer a hand down to her. "I've been meaning to fix this step."

She places her hand in his and as he hoists her up to her feet she says through gritted teeth, "If it's not troll-foot umbrella stands sticking out to trip me, it's plants catching my cloak."

"Oh." Remus' fingers remain around her hand for a moment longer than is strictly necessary for helping her to regain her balance, and then he releases it and drops to a crouch to retrieve her cauldron, hoping the light out here is too poor for her to see him wince as his knees creak. "No doubt you have noticed I should have noted on your party invitation not to BYOA."

"Bring my own-"

"Aconite." He plucks one of the flowers and offers it up to her. When her eyes swing to the yard, mouth agape, he says, "Or didn't you wonder why the old place is called Monkshood Croft?"

"Monkshood..." She'd completely forgotten the common name of the plant, as Damocles Belby's recipe for Wolfsbane Potion refers to the active ingredient as 'aconite', with 'wolfsbane' in brackets after the initial usage, and so it didn't register when she looked in Remus' file for the site she was to Apparate to.

Noting that the dawning irony renders her speechless, Remus gives a little smile - though he might not do if he knew that when his parents purchased the house, the estate agent had said with a laugh, 'Not only will you get that privacy you're looking for, but it's guaranteed to protect against werewolf attacks' or that, when the family abandoned the house after Remus was bitten there, John Lupin had sent the estate agent a note inquiring whether that was a money-back guarantee.

But Remus does not know any of this, and so grins wryly and says, "I may be badly dressed, but I am rather splendidly cloaked in irony."

She nods as he stands, coming up closer to her than she expects, though it is purely intentional on his part, and she sways a little at his nearness and with the warmth he radiates as he leans in to kiss her cheek and utter in her ear rasping words of thanks for coming here and doing this for him.

The next thing she knows, he's got her by the hand once more and she's tripping over the step, for which he again apologises, and then her foot catches a chair close by the door, just beyond the glow of the firelight which, apparently, provides the only light in the room.

Not that there is much to light.

The entire cottage consists of one main living area containing a fireplace and two battered armchairs so broken-in that 'squashy' would indicate a great deal firmer a surface to sit on than these seats provide; an open kitchen consisting of cupboards lacking doors and a sink with a pump and a wood-burning stove for cooking, a table strewn with rolls of parchment, meant to seat four, but which has only one ladder-backed chairs at each end; and beyond that a single bedroom, which used to be two very small rooms until Remus knocked down the dividing wall years ago to open up the space; and of course a bathroom, again with very old-fashioned plumbing, including a Victorian toilet with a high-level cistern.

There are no curtains on the bricked-over windows, though tarnished rods still hang across the tops, and Tonks imagines a wolf's powerful forearms and claws reaching up and slicing through them like a knife through butter.

"You'll have to forgive the shabbiness and the clutter," says Remus, seeing every thought flicker across her face as he sets her cauldron on the table and shoves his papers to one end. "Mum always made it lovely when we lived here, but I am afraid years of standing empty have not been kind."

Pride stops him from claiming this place as his home outright, which is hypocritical as he wants her to see lycanthropy as it is, and it is poverty all the time while it is fur and fang only at full moon.

Tonks is no fool, of course, and has figured out what he's left unsaid, that though his parents removed from this house after he was bitten, this must necessarily be where he's lived for most of his unemployable adult life, till Sirius turned up last June with the words, 'He's come back,' on his lips. She does not know, of course (and Remus would be mortified if she did), that more words followed as Sirius looked around at Monkshood Cottage: 'Dumbledore told me to lie low at yours, but mine'll at least keep out the rain - also, _my_ old lady's got antique carpets to piss on.'

So, knowing that Tonks is a very clever witch, Remus swallows his pride.

"Nor," he says, "have the years filled my Gringott's vault with enough gold to replace the roof with anything but thatch. Once upon a time there was a proper roof, though I never had any illusions about my housekeeping. I am a typical bachelor even on nights I'm not moonlighting as a savage beast. Oh yes - before the Shrieking Shack and after I left school, my parents brought me back here for my transformations. Many things, it seems, once broken, are not twice as strong with the mending."

While Remus intends only to paint a picture of the gruesome reality of what he is, Tonks senses he is talking about more than just tearing up the curtains. This is a correct assumption, though he, naturally, says nothing about the destruction transformations wreak upon him personally, and she, of course, doesn't dare ask or tell him he's wrong about the strength of things mended, even though she believes deep down that the mere fact that he _can_ be glib speaks volumes of his mettle.

She even begins to understand his attitude about the prank - at least in the sense that she is more certain than ever that Remus and the werewolf are entirely separated entities, and that the potion she's here to brew for him ensures that the werewolf will not consume the man any more than it consumed the boy the night the werewolf was made.

Which means that Remus has his work cut out for him these next four nights. Especially as the sort of thoughts she is having about him (namely, that if there is any justice in the world, then one of the fruits of this war will be the happily ever after his dignity and kindness deserve) mean that she has fallen for him more than he dares to dream, and if she is to express any of this to him, he will fall even deeper than he already has.

 _Oh come and stir my cauldron,_

 _And if you do it right,_

 _I'll boil you up some hot, strong love_

 _To keep you warm tonight!_

The jazz tune blaring suddenly out of the wireless on the mantel, which she notices only just now, is completely out of context in Monkshood Croft, and both of them think it, though Tonks is relieved to feel some of her discomfort at her surroundings, with the signs of the werewolf's destructive force, ebb at this link to humanity. A Lunascope stands beside it, but in spite of the pregnant silver moon, tells of a scientific human mind guarding against pending danger.

There is a set of books, too - novels, apparently a series as they are numbered and all bear the title, _Matilda Among Muggles_. Giggling at this, Tonks picks one up, and at the same moment as she reads the author's name, Sylvia Lupin, in neat lettering on the front cover, Remus, says, "I see you've discovered my very small claim to fame."

Tonks wheels to face him, eyes wide. "Sylvia Lupin - your mum was a published novelist?"

"Well, she was no Fifi Lafolle as far as success goes," says Remus with a grin, "but the critics always liked her."

"Aren't you glad your Mum was acclaimed instead of rich? Imagine how humiliating it'd be to be Fifi Lafolle's kid."

"Oh, but Mum might as well have written bodice-rippers, as far as I was concerned. I couldn't have been more mortified than when the Muggle Studies professor in my day included the first _Matilda_ book on the syllabus. After I was bitten she switched to non-fiction, but her publisher insisted that there was even less of a market for _Little Ones With Lycanthropy_ or _Living With Lycanthropy_ than there was for books about one young witch's adventures living with a Muggle family."

There is a moment of silence during which Tonks flails for a response, wrong-footed by the juxtaposition of humour with harsh reality, which makes both of them catch their breaths in dreadful anticipation of their playful mood being broken just after they managed to revive it in this strange situation, but then Celestina warbles out the refrain of _A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love_ again, and Tonks arches an eyebrow at Remus in a familiar teasing and (dare he hope?) flirtatious, way.

"Did you owl in a request to the WWN to cue me to start brewing your potion?"

Laughing, Remus' heart leaps even though he thinks she must be unaware of the full effect her words have on the deepest part of him, an invitation for him to love her. It is enough to hope that her subconscious knows, and it does - as certainly as it knows that she is afraid of him.

"I've never been wild about this song," he says as she moves to the workspace he's created for her, taking his own seat across the table, "but having heard Sirius' rendition, I can honestly say I prefer Ms. Warbeck's."

"Oh God, me too! And I never ever thought I'd say that."

Nor has she ever thought she might like to dance to _A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love_ , as enters her mind now.

But of course she doesn't ask Remus to dance, and soon Celestina Warbeck recedes to a background warble as she focuses on the complicated task at hand. The recipe becomes more familiar to her each night, and her confidence about the amount of aconite grows, but so does her appreciation of the potion's importance, tonight more than ever, as she sees the destructive powers of the werewolf firsthand in every inch of this ruined cottage.

With a shiver, she thinks that if others come here, the Shrieking Shack will fall to Second Most Haunted Dwelling In Britain.

Remus is working, too, though not as attentively as Tonks, because his attention is on her. Seeing her shudder, he reacts instinctively against the notion that his plan might backfire, that in revealing his innermost nature to her, he will repel her altogether. And though he would rather hold her at arms' length than hold her to his heart only lose her later, inevitably, with a lie, he is only human, and likes to be liked, and does not want to go _too_ far.

"You got me everything I need from the Werewolf Registry," he says. "I knew I could count on you - especially to package it well. I had to read the entire journal of Doris Perkiss before I could bring myself to transfigure it to the files, and consequently I am very behind."

"Sorry," says Tonks, laughing.

"Never apologise for making me laugh. Or Sirius - I read it aloud to him, and it distracted him from me having a top-secret assignment."

The mention of Sirius sobers Tonks. She's done a fair amount of obsessing today over Sirius' reaction to her working with Remus on his top-secret assignment, wondering what he'll be like if she ever gets together with Remus, as Sirius, to her mind, resents their professional relationship (of course he really just resents the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, literally and figurative, and Peter Pettigrew). Not that she doesn't feel sorry for him, stuck in that horrible house, which seems to be making up for the effect Azkaban's Dementors didn't have on him.

"Glad to be helpful to you both," she says. "Are you sure I got everything? There was another filing cabinet in the Registry office I didn't make it to. I don't think it was people, but if it's in the Registry, it'll probably be of interest to you. I can go back next time I've got a duty."

She tries to keep her voice steady, so as to indicate nothing more than simply running out of time kept her from the other file cabinet, but Remus' eyes are on her, scrutinising, discerning that something happened, and he doesn't even need to ask what for her to tell him.

"Walden MacNair."

"The Death Eater who works in the Department For the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures?"

"Head of the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures, yeah."

"He was to be Buckbeak's executioner."

"He was poking about while I was in the Registry."

"And saw you?"

Tonks nods, as surprised at the sudden pallor of Remus' face as he is by the rush of fear that she might have been endangered while doing something _for_ him. He's prepared himself for the danger _he_ poses to her, but someone else, beyond his control...

He rakes his hands through his hair and lets out his breath, reminding himself that she is an Auror, which is not terribly comforting considering the mortality rate. "Thank Merlin you were disguised, but what in Merlin's name did MacNair make of a Support Services agent working in the Registry at four in the morning?"

"He didn't have much room to criticise, being in an odd department himself at the same ungodly hour," says Tonks quickly, colouring a little, which Remus notices, but thinks nothing of it, though of course she is afraid that he does.

"Doing what, I wonder?" Remus asks, even though he's got a pretty good idea that MacNair has the same information he does and may be working on a similar assignment for Voldemort to his for Dumbledore.

Tonks has no such idea, as she is not even fully aware of why Remus asked her to copy the dossiers from the Werewolf Registry for him, anyway. There is one bit of information that might be pertinent to his assignment, though she hesitates to broach it, as it involves the divulging of information about _him_ which frankly she's not certain he means her to be privy to, at least not in the manner that it was. She certainly doesn't want to tell him the lie she told McNair to cover her tracks, and flushes at the shameful memory of saying, 'That werewolf who got sacked from Hogwarts has been hassling me in Support Services, and I thought reading up on his personal history might help me deal with him if he comes back tomorrow,' and what happened after still makes her shake with humiliation and rage.

"Tonks?" From across the table, Remus stares at her with concern, though she is sure it must be suspicion about her prolonged silence. "What happened with MacNair?"

"He said horrible things about werewolves," she tells him, not exactly lying. "He talked about dealing with the 'werewolf problem' once and for all, and said that I - Mercy Burbage, I mean - will be out of a job once he convinces Umbridge to pass the legislation for it, which he doesn't think will be long."

She speaks quietly, appropriately for the subject matter, respectful of the those who are at the mercy of Death Eaters and fear-mongering lawmakers, though without a personal emotional resonance. She does not connect Remus with these people. He is not a werewolf to her.

"Voldemort hates my kind as much as he hates Muggle-born wizards. But just because he wants us dead doesn't mean he won't try to use us first."

Remus looks down at the rolls of parchments she's brought him, avoiding her eyes, though if he did look into them, he would find them full of sadness and fear and compassion and love such as she doesn't know is within her, such as neither of them imagines exists at all.

"I have much work to do," he says, "and less time to do it than Dumbledore thought."

"I'll finish your potion and leave you to it, then."

"I could use a hand - if you're up to it."

She can't say no, even though the thought of reading files containing more stories like Remus' makes her sure she'll never have another nightmare-free night for the rest of her life. She's sure he can have no idea of what he caught her dreaming last night, and he hasn't. It occurs to her that he might be trying to scare her, and then she promptly dismisses it, because she cannot fathom anyone doing that, even though he is, because he sees from her only reckless courage worthy of Gryffindor, which he loves her for, and which he admits to himself, just as she is beginning to admit to herself that she is afraid.

As Celestina Warbeck belts out a glass-shattering high note, Tonks juts out her chin in defiance - which is true courage, though she does not realizes this.

"What do you need me to do?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Reviewers get to spend an evening with Remus at Monkshood Croft, helping him with a few things which may or may not involve potion-brewing or mysterious work for the Order... ;)


	4. Chapter 4

The Werewolf Registry files are arranged in alphabetical order by each werewolf's surname, but Remus' assignment requires an entirely different system of organisation, so over the course of two nights, he and Tonks hold their own grim sorting ceremony for the hundred or so werewolves that have registered since Newt Scamander instituted the Werewolf Registry in 1947.

First they separate the dead from the living.

Then the living are divided into sub-categories:

> 1) The living who receive assistance from Werewolf Support Services.  
> 

  


> 2) The living who do _not_ receive assistance from Werewolf Support Services, which is again sub-categorised as:  
> 

  


>   
> 
>
>> a) Those who never applied for assistance from Werewolf Support Services, or were denied it. (Which would include Remus, had he not pulled his file from the lot, not ready for Tonks to see it yet, until she has a clearer idea of what ilk he is.)  
> 
> 
>   
> 

  


>   
> 
>
>> b) Those who at one time received assistance from Werewolf Support Services, but since have had it revoked for failure to comply with the Werewolf Code of Conduct, as laid down in 1637, and as modified by Dolores Umbridge in 1993.  
> 
> 
>   
> 

  
And finally, the missing.

Each case file contains the most recent photograph of the werewolf, as well as one of his or her current place of residence, and is headed:

 _ **Surname, First Name, Middle Name** (Date of Birth; Date of Bite; Date of Death (if applicable); or Whereabouts (if known, otherwise Date Last Seen)_

Remus does not read the files beyond this point; he will later, of course, in preparation for his interviews, but for now, the people he eventually will be contacting to ask how they feel about the Ministry and whether Fenrir Greyback or any other suspicious characters have come calling are nothing more to him than names and dates and categories.

For example:

 _ **Harfang, Faolan Conan** (Date of Birth: 14th February 1980; Date of Bite: 24th December 1989; Whereabouts: Unknown since 23rd January 1990)_ goes into the stack of werewolves Remus may have to go searching for, should the results of his other inquiries move Dumbledore to deem it necessary.

What Remus does not know, though Tonks does, as she reads every word in every file, is that Faolan Conan Harfang, formerly of Aberdeen, is a sleepwalker who frequently crept silently out of the house whilst his parents and younger siblings slept on. When his last known sleepwalking episode occurred at full moon, he woke to a nightmare. Found nearly a day later on the gore-stained snowy forest floor, half-frozen and in shock, one arm nearly torn from his body, St. Mungo's Healers were able to replenish Faolan's blood and save his arm, though of course they could not cure his Lycanthropy. His parents, Conan and Dymphna took him home to Aberdeen, but the following month they reported to the Werewolf Registry that Faolan had not lived through his first transformation. An inquiry, however, revealed that Conan, fearing for the safety of his four younger children, Side-Along Apparated the nine-year-old to the Forest of Dean and abandoned him there. A sweep of the forest by the Werewolf Capture Unit turned up no trace of the boy, though to this day he is not presumed dead, as the Forest of Dean is a known haunt of Fenrir Greyback's.

Faolan Harfang, Tonks learns, and which Remus knows without reading files, is not the only werewolf in the Registry abandoned by parents after being bitten.

 _ **J** **ones, Calliope Ann** (Date of Birth: 4th April 1973; Date of Bite: 15th June 1984; Whereabouts: Unknown since 9th March 1993) _would have been in Tonks' year at Hogwarts, along with her twin brother, _**Jones, Callisto Andrew** (Date of Birth: 4th April 1973; Date of Bite: 15th June 1984; Whereabouts: Azkaban Prison since 9th March 1993)_ had she not got wind that one of the neighbourhood boys had dared Callisto to sneak out onto Hampstead Heath at full moon, to see if there actually were any werewolves in London. Going out to stop him from being stupid and getting himself into real trouble with their father, Calliope found Callisto cornered by one of the beasts and attempted to frighten it away by pelting it with stones. Naturally, this only angered the werewolf, who attacked Calliope before biting Callisto as well.

The twins, after their father threw them out of the family's home in London, registered themselves and, as they agreed to comply with the Werewolf Registry's regulations, including monitored transformations in Werewolf Capture Unit containment cells, they were granted monthly stipends that fed and sheltered them, at least. But Calliope, always a delicate child, more sickly with their state of poverty, always suffered greatly during her transformations, and when the Wolfsbane Potion was invented, Callisto, desperate to get it for her, but too destitute to afford an apothecary who could brew it, resorted to theft. Of course, not having learnt how to use a wand properly, he was easily overcome.

Since Callisto's incarceration in Azkaban, Calliope has abandoned the flat they shared, has not sought assistance from Werewolf Support Services or transformed at the Ministry, and is considered likely to have been approached by Fenrir Greyback, offering protection in exchange for her allegiance.

So many of the stories, Tonks notes, seem connected with Greyback, including Remus', which she shouldn't know, but she does, though she still has not let on, noting the absence of his from the others.

 _ **Knightley, Fortuna Marjorie** (Date of Birth: 5th November 1946; Date of Bite: 20th July 1963; Date of Death: 17th August 1963)_ was spending the summer holiday before her seventh year at Hogwarts (where she was a Hufflepuff) apprenticed at Madam Malkin's Robes For All Occasions. After closing up shop one evening, Fortuna was on her way to meet schoolmates at Florean Fortescue's for ice cream when Fenrir Greyback assailed her, dragging her into an abandoned shop in Knockturn Alley where he raped her before he transformed and bit her. Miraculously, Fortuna had survived the brutalities, but the morning after her first transformation, her parents found her dead in the cellar of their country home, ripped apart by her own claws and fangs. She had been with child.

"You're trembling," Remus' voice rasps gently into Tonks' thoughts, from which she looks only too relieved to be pulled.

"Bit cold."

She rubs her arms below the short sleeves of her cropped t-shirt. It's a convincing enough gesture that Remus gets up, stands behind her chair, and chafes her skin to warm it. Another story, however, is told by her pale face, drawn mouth, and pink hair that's dulled now to a brownish colour -- the colour of Fortuna Knightley's, in fact, though Remus doesn't realise this, not having looked at the dead girl's photograph. He is sure his plans are about to come to fruition, though in reality he is about to be disappointed, or at least proven wrong, because his hands are so warm, almost feverishly so, that Tonks wonders if his body isn't already changing as the moon waxes fuller (looking at the Lunascope, it is difficult to tell that the moon is not yet full), as morphing always elevates her body temperature.

"Does it frighten you?" he asks.

Tonks' shoulders go rigid beneath his palms, and then she clumsily gets up from her chair, looking at it for a moment like she's going to kick it over, though she doesn't, instead flinging out all the physical force into her words.

"It pisses me off! These people are victims of violent attacks, and yet their stories are written down in files kept in the _Beasts_ Division of The Department For the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. The Werewolf Registry ought to be in the _Beings_ Division, along with Support Services, as they're dealing with the same people. Bloody stupid way of organising a department, if you ask me."

"I wish they would. But at least if MacNair gets through to Umbridge, you won't have to be perturbed by inconsistencies."

Shoulders squared, her hands at her sides ball into fists, and her fingernails with their chipped silver glitter nail polish bore narrow crescents into her palms. Remus' eyes are on the rapid rise and fall of her chest, as if he thinks that looking at her hard enough will enable him to see her heart pumping double-time against her breathing. The first night she brewed Wolfsbane Potion for him is still near in his mind, so he thinks his flippant comment missed its humorous mark once again, and that she isn't lying when she says she's pissed off.

The fact is, she was being honest before, but _now_ she is frightened. His remark hasn't fully registered yet, because in a memory she would rather not, but cannot stop herself from revisiting, as though Summoned there, she is walking down a dark, narrow corridor.

The Werewolf Registry, though part of the Beasts Division, does not lie on the fourth level of the Ministry of Magic. Instead it is located somewhere between storeys, down a flight of stairs where plumbing is exposed and the floors are bare concrete, neither tiled nor carpeted, the walls un-plastered stone. There are no enchanted windows, the only light provided by haphazardly placed gas lamps, not all of which are lit, much less work.

The Registry itself consists of one room little bigger than a broom cupboard, and across the corridor, barely a yard away, barred cells are dug out of the walls. No, not even cells: cages, kennels where no self-respecting dog lover would pen a pet. There the Werewolf Capture Unit confines werewolves caught on the prowl at full moon, and there (though Tonks tells herself this _cannot_ be the place, it is humanly impossible to treat people so, though Remus, of course, knows differently) werewolves may willingly surrender themselves at full moon if they have nowhere safe to transform.

The corridor with the cages of chains bolted to the floors and walls and low ceilings is the only way to the Werewolf Registry, where people are stripped of their human rights in exchange for a meagre allowance.

There is talk, though neither Remus nor Tonks knows it, of mandatory full moon confinement for all registered werewolves. The violation of this mandate will carry a weighty prison sentence. A harsher penalty will befall unregistered werewolves caught transformed by the Werewolf Capture Unit.

"I cannot say I appreciate subhuman treatment -- or sub- _being_ treatment, as the case may rather be," says Remus when her silence becomes too much. "I avoided registration all my life, prior to my stint at Hogwarts -- it hasn't always been compulsory, you know, and my parents kept quiet in the hope that Dumbledore would allow me to attend Hogwarts."

Self-reproach laces his tone, for it is his carelessness that drew the Ministry's eye, always open to the readiest scapegoat, to his kind, and away from the true enemy.

"Do you reckon Umbridge is a Death Eater?" Tonks asks. "MacNair is, so You-Know-Who could be trying to take over--"

Remus chuckles grimly. "Umbridge doesn't need to be a Death Eater to serve Voldemort." Tonks shudders at the name, but he continues. "Her own ideology will give Voldemort a sufficient foothold into the government. It is deeply distressing. And yes -- Voldemort will try to infiltrate the Ministry of Magic, and if ever he was to have a chance of success--"

"It's not now, not with Kingsley and me working there. And while I'm at it, I think I'll promote Hermione Granger's House-elf rights thing--"

"S.P.E.W."

"--and get her to expand it to werewolves."

"What do you think she was talking to me about the other night at dinner?" says Remus with a laugh, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets and leaning against the rickety table. "As a matter of fact, she's convinced me to document what it is like to transform under the influence of Wolfsbane Potion--"

"That's bloody _brilliant_! If they see you're fully human, and no different from Animagi, they'll have to strike those employment laws, at the very least."

It is, of course, far more complicated than that, but she will see that soon enough, and he cannot bring himself to be a killjoy.

"You can bet if I discover anything along those lines I shall certainly write it in a paper to present before the Wizengamot."

"I'll stand right by you and hold your hand while you do."

There aren't words. Well, there is one thing he wants to tell her, and another he wants to ask, along the lines of holding her hand while he presents a report to the Wizengamot, but when he opens his mouth, the hopeful expectation in her dark eyes makes him choke.

She would be with him right now, if he asked her to. Right now, without hesitation, she would say yes. She would be his.

But it would be no different than any relationship he has had in the past, because it still would not be built upon the foundation of truth. It must have that, if they are to succeed. This -- wartime -- is not the time for failures. If there is anyone he can be truthful with, it is her. And if the truth is too much for her, then it will be for any witch, and he can lay these hopes, these longings of not going through life alone, to rest.

To that end, he now must let it rest -- for a little while.

"I think we have done quite enough work for tonight," he says.

Tonks blinks, and though her lips continue to curve in a smile, it shifts subtly to one that only goes skin deep, as if she has morphed.

And then, not knowing what has just happened between them (apparently not what she thought, though in reality it is much more than she even hoped), she says goodnight.  
 _  
_


	5. Chapter 5

Her throat burns from screaming and with the lingering taste of vomit; her eyelids are raw and almost rusty feeling with the tears dried in the creases when she blinks. It is no state to come to Remus in, and she shouldn't be here twice in one night anyway, but it is the singular thought in her mind after she wakes in the small hours of the morning, the only thing that keeps her from lying frozen in her bed, gawping in terror at the window below which a huge grey werewolf lurks, ready to leap through at her the instant she drops asleep. So vivid is the dream that she believes this, even though her flat is three storeys up from the street, another flat below hers, and Boil and Brew, the cauldron shop, below that, and even though there has not been a werewolf sighting in Diagon Alley since Fenrir Greyback raped and bit Fortuna Marjorie Knightley in 1963. Over thirty years ago. Long before Tonks was born. When Remus himself was just toddling along on chubby legs and saying 'Gwindywow' and had not yet met Greyback.

At great risk of Splinching, she Apparates to him, to _Remus_ , who hasn't had a pleasant dream since he was six, Remus who will keep her safe in this place, Monkshood Croft, where he was bitten, because it wasn't him she dreamed of, she tells herself, it was just a werewolf, any werewolf, she's read about so many the past three nights.

"Dora," he rasps, his voice huskier than usual from sleep, his face grey and lined with surprise and alarm at the sight of her, a scarce few hours since she left him with his fifth dose of Wolfsbane Potion, but she does not notice this, or that he's wearing a hastily thrown on dressing gown over a vest and pyjama bottoms, except that when she throws her arms around him and presses her cheek to the worn flannel she feels the softness and thinks that if protection has a scent, it is the one infused in the fabric, distinctly him.

Remus holds her, not the slightest bit baffled about what is going on because her trembling and the faint smell of sick and her hair, straw coloured again, and her outfit -- a pair of very short stripy cotton shorts and a tiny camisole, and nothing at all on her feet except electric blue nail polish -- tell him everything he needs to know.

"It's okay now," he whispers. "You had a nightmare, but you're awake now."

She nods, and, not knowing that she is still haunted by a pair of amber eyes, glowing with hatred, Remus draws back, pushes her damp fringe back from her forehead, and kisses her brow, which brings a bit of colour into her ghastly skin. He nearly kisses her again, but then doesn't, remembering from the past that women tend to like talking these things out.

In reality, it would not go amiss for him to go a bit, well, _male_ on her, as at the back of her mind, in her subconscious, hover thoughts of his lean body covering hers...of his mouth blessing her bare stomach, breasts, warm inner curves of her thighs...of burying her fingers in his thick, soft hair to root herself firmly in the human world as he fills her...of pleasure, not terror, being her cry in the dark.

"Awake," he says, "and in dire need of hot chocolate, I think?"

She looks at him very hard for a moment, eyes squinting almost as if she is trying to see through a mist, as indeed she is. A dream mist, through which she is just making out beyond the feral eyes and salivating fangs Remus' mild blue eyes and the faint upward curve of his lips.

A smile ghosts her face. "You and your chocolate."

It is the first time she's spoken since she woke screaming, and her voice is hoarse. Remus, of course, does not miss this, and his heart gives a lurch, but at the same time he grins at her teasing, and her own widens, which makes his heart beat again -- though at a distinctly quicker pace than before as he slips his arm around her waist, tucking her against his side to guide her into the cottage.

He releases her reluctantly, only to draw the less battered of the armchairs close to the fireplace for her, and she sinks into it, curling her legs up beneath her, and watches him go about making the hot chocolate.

"Have you ever thought of making a job of it?"

He takes the tin of powered cocoa down from a cupboard and looks over his shoulder at her with quizzical blue eyes. "Make a job of chocolate? I think Honeydukes has rather cornered the market on chocolate."

"You like travel, don't you?"

"Yes -- non sequitur?"

"You could go around peddling hot chocolate to people who've had bad dreams or run-ins with Dementors."

Remus _hmm_ s and runs a hand over his stubble. "Not a bad idea, only I'd rather call it _snake oil saleswizardry_ than _peddling_ if you don't mind."

"Do you need help painting your hippogriff-drawn cart?"

"Bubblegum pink?"

"What else?"

Giggling, Tonks scrunches up her face to morph her hair to the appropriate shade, though it doesn't feel quite right -- the tingle in her scalp feels weak, sluggish -- and Remus' faltering smile tells her she hasn't quite managed it. There has always been an emotional connection with her morphing. (Which, in her adolescent years, did _not_ compensate for the fact that she could morph spots away.) This morning when she woke from a restless night with a thick head of grey, she had a hell of a time morphing it away.

Concentrating in earnest, she feels it go as Remus' face relaxes, then, drawing her legs up in her chair and huging them to her chest, she musters the jokiest tone she can after that.

"A pink cart with fancy gold lettering: _Professor Romulus' Crazy Cocoa Concoction._ "

"You've forgotten _& Rainbow's Wonderful Wolfsbane_ \-- in smaller letters underneath, of course, and in brackets."

Her smile softens, and not because his joke about second billing miffs her. She shivers, and though Remus knows she is troubled, _frightened_ , by the mention of Wolfsbane Potion, he will not repeat his earlier mistake of bringing it up.

Instead, he presses a mug of hot chocolate into her hands, oblivious to the possibility that she might actually be shivering for a far more pleasant reason, that even though they're joking, Remus might really want her by his side, that over these past five nights they might have become partners.

And then he is slipping off his dressing gown and draping it over her shoulders, pulling it closed around her while he himself is as good as bare-chested in his dingy vest which clings to his slim torso, baring his arms and leaving nothing of his shape to her imagination. He is thin but wiry, and her breath hitches at the discovery that his upper arms and shoulders match the forearms she's ogled more than once. (It's always men's arms that get her.)

Seeing her eyes on his bare skin, Remus assumes she's noticed the patch of marred skin that runs over of his shoulder and along the edge of his collarbone, red and in the perfect imprint of a werewolf's teeth. And of course it is impossible to miss, and Tonks' blood runs cold in her veins, though not so much because she finds it hideous as because she is seeing in her mind exactly how he came by such a scar.

"I'm sorry," Remus says, not looking at Tonks as he strides around her chair so that his back is to her, though this of course does not hide the scar completely. He Summons a shirt from the bedroom. "A werewolf's bite mark must be a horrifying image after a nightmare. You are dreaming about werewolves, aren't you?"

Mortified by her transparency and fearing this will be the end of everything, she sets her mug on the floor and says sharply, "Not about _you_."

She doesn't look at him, not wanting to see his eyes full of disbelief, as they are, not knowing that if only she would admit the truth to herself and to him, it would be the start of everything.

"Forgive me," says Remus, letting it drop. "I am so accustomed to the scars, I did not think--"

He stops short as her hand on his shoulder -- his right shoulder -- keeps him from slipping his arm into the sleeve of the rumpled shirt he discarded after she left earlier.

She turns him toward her, and for a moment Remus forgets about the guilt of a moment ago that he is knowingly and _purposely_ showing her things no human ought to see, that he is not like other men who protect the women they love from anything cruel and ugly, because she does not recoil from him, but instead touches the raised marks with the lightest of fingertips, a look on her face which mirrors the fascination on his face whenever she morphs.

"They look as if it could have happened just last night," she says.

"Werewolf bites never fully heal. They are cursed wounds." Remus catches her wrist and draws her hand away from his skin, bending his head to catch her gaze. " _I_ am cursed, Tonks."

"Then let me bless you."

She leans into him, and he inhales sharply, sliding his hand down her wrist to her hand, opening his palm on hers, threading their fingers together as she dips her head to kiss his scars.

He wants her.

He wants her, and she is in no doubt of this fact as she presses herself to him, her other hand at his waist, slipping under the hem of his vest. A dam is broken in him, flooding him with a desire that could drown him so very easily -- a thought which is at once tempting and immensely terrifying.

"You already have blessed me," he gasps, uncurling his fingers from around hers. "The potion--"

Her hot breath against his skin instantly cools.

She releases his hand.

Slides her hand out from his vest.

Backs away.

"What did I tell you, Remus?"

"I--"

"It's not about the bloody potion."

Remus' protest dissolves into a sigh. Tonks is right, but she is wrong. Wondering why this can't be simple, or if it _is_ simple but he, a fool, is complicating it, he makes his third impulsive decision of the week (fourth, counting the removal of his dressing gown). Excusing himself, he retreats to the bedroom, returning a moment later with a file.

Tonks reacts visibly, inhaling sharply, her eyes bulging in a way that would be comical in any other situation than this one.

"This is my file from the Werewolf Registry," he says, offering it to her. "I would like you to take it home and read it."

"Remus, I--" She catches herself, and her gaze drops to her feet. She is balanced precariously on the side of one foot as the big toe of the other scratches her ankle.

"I know it's hardly a good bedtime story," says Remus, reaching out a hand to touch her shoulder, but deciding at the last moment that is too impersonal a gesture, and so brushes the backs of his fingers to her cheek, instead. "Especially when you've had a nightmare. Of course I do not expect you to read it tonight. Tomorrow, by the light of day will be fine. But, Tonks, I need you to know--"

"I do know."

"What?"

"I've read your file."

Remus' hand falls to his side. He never thought, when he told her to open his file for the location to Apparate to, that she would read his dossier. Though, looking at her, he sees that clearly this has eaten at her for days, and in his usual self-recriminating way, he castigates himself for not explicitly telling her not to read it, and then for being such a bloody hypocrite when he has just _asked_ her to read it.

"Well -- I didn't read it," she amends. "It was read to me."

Her eyes glaze with tears, but they do not fall, and her face goes very red, and though Remus does not identify its cause as the anger or humiliation she endured as his file was read to her in the mocking tones of Walden MacNair, which make Severus Snape seem a playful and harmless jokester, Remus knows that she is the most trustworthy person that he has ever known.

"By Walden MacNair," she says, and then, shaking with all the rage she's held inside for the four nights since she broke into the Werewolf Registry, she sinks into her chair again and tells Remus of the lie she told to cover herself, which does not offend him in the slightest, and indeed, she feels the fool for not having thought she could tell him.

"MacNair read to you exactly how it happened, then?" Remus asks. "You know that--"

"Fenrir Greyback waited outside your window and--"

She cannot say what she knows is in the file.

 _ **Lupin, Remus John** (Date of Birth: 10th March 1960; Date of Bite: 24th June 1966; Whereabouts: Monkshood Croft, Yorkshire)_ was woken on midsummer's night by what he took to be a wounded dog whimpering just outside of his bedroom window. He opened it, and reached his hand down to the animal lurking in the tall Monkshood blooms growing in the front garden. For just a second Remus laughed as the dog ceased whimpering and lifted its head to lick his outstretched fingers, but then the mouth opened in a howl, and a grey wolf leapt through the open window. Woken by the unmistakable werewolf's howl, Remus' parents, John and Silvia Lupin, came running, but not before the werewolf had pinned their six-year-old son to his bed and sunk his fangs into the boy's shoulder.

"I know Fenrir Greyback bit you on purpose," she says. "Because he took offence to a comment your father made in a lecture."

She would continue, but Remus looks very grey now, the red marks on his shoulder even more prominent against his pallor, his eyes very blue, though the whites shot through with tiny red veins, clearly exhausted. He rubs his hand over his jaw, the friction of his day's growth of beard audible in the still and silent room, then, letting his hand fall to his side, feels back for the armchair and sits at the edge of it.

"My father was in potions," he says, his voice deep with fatigue and discomfort, Tonks thinks -- correctly, at the topic, even though he wants there to be nothing hidden from her. "I would feel a dismal failure if Mum had not been rather abysmal at the subject, as well--"

"I thought she said you'd never be able to cook--"

"She couldn't cook, either. She also was not the only member of the family interested in Muggles. My grandfather -- her father -- was a Muggle, a historian, and Dad was fascinated by his work on the ancient Greeks, particularly, and focused his potions research on magic found in ancient Muggle cultures. To make a long story short, he discovered that one weapon called Greek Fire mystifies modern scholars because the ingredients are not known. Or rather, the ingredients are not _believed in_."

"Werewolf...testicles," says Tonks weakly, wrapping his dressing gown tighter around herself. "MacNair said something about werewolf testicles."

Without glancing at her, Remus nods. "Yes. And gallbladders, but testicles, as you can imagine, are the bit everyone always seems to remember. You can also probably imagine that after Dad mentioned that in his speech -- only in passing, mind -- it was the only thing anyone took away from the entire night. It caused a great stir. I was there, and of course as I was very small, I did not understand a word Dad was saying, but I knew it must have been very clever because most everyone was laughing, though Dumbledore, who was sitting next to me, only raised his eyebrows, and at home that night I heard Mum and Dad rowing in their room, which they never did, and I gathered that Dad had said something he shouldn't have, without thinking, a trait I inherited from him, and the next morning it was the headline of the _Daily Prophet_ \-- taken out of context and misquoted, of course: _Potions Expert John Lupin Suggests Lycanthropes Donate Bodies To Muggle Science -- Solution To The Werewolf Problem?_ "

"Oh, Remus!"

Her hand shoots out to catch his were it rests on the armrest of his chair, and her fingers are like ice. He turns so that he can take her hand in both of his, gently chafing her skin to warm her. Thinking he has said much more than he should considering that it is because of terror that she is even here right now, he forces himself to smile and speak lightly.

"It wasn't even Rita Skeeter, as she was still in pigtails in those days. Who would have thought Fenrir Greyback reads the _Prophet_?"

"How do you know it was him? He's never been captured. Did your parents recognise him?" Tonks shudders, looking through the open bedroom door and seeing just where a huge wolf with shaggy, matted grey fur had once savaged a helpless child.

"There was a letter. My parents would never tell me what it said, apart from that it made it abundantly clear that the bite was a premeditated act of revenge."

The letter said:

> _Dear John,_
> 
>  _Just my little contribution to your research, as Merlin knows the active ingredient is devilishly hard to come by._
> 
>  _Yours Sincerely,_   
> _Fenrir Greyback_

"Your poor father," Tonks says, blinking against tears. "He must have felt awful."

Remus gives her a sad smile, squeezes her hand, then draws his into his lap, weaving his fingers together.

The absence of his touch leaves her cold, and she tugs the frayed sleeves of his dressing gown down over her hands.

"He never could be free of it," says Remus quietly, yet with the heaviness of guilt tugging at his tones. "After I was bitten we moved frequently, renting places for a month or two at a time and then moving on. I think it must have had as much to do with his mortification being too great to face his old circle of English potion-brewers as to seek a cure for me. It haunted him till his dying day."

"You-Know-Who tried to recruit him, MacNair said. But your dad turned them down, and..."

The actual words, which Tonks keeps to herself, because they are too sickening to utter, and she wouldn't wish anyone else, especially not Remus, privy to them, were, 'The Dark Lord thought Old Man Lupin would be useful to him. Cut a right generous deal. But it seemed the old boy lost his bravado when it was his own kid's balls in question. Pathetic Mudblood and Dark Creature-loving scum. But the Dark Lord always gets what he wants from those he wants something from, and if they don't give it willingly, they get their punishment.'

"If you can call Voldemort's method _recruitment_ ," says Remus, his kind face hardening as his gentle voice takes on an edge, which startles Tonks as much as the words that follow: "He sent Severus--"

"Snape!"

"--to present my father with a bargain: my Muggle-born mother's life, and a future for me in exchange for his knowledge of Greek Fire and other ancient magical concoctions for warfare. My father knew perfectly well that Voldemort would keep no such promise, and he sent Severus away saying that he would answer within twenty-four hours, then he sent me a Patronus -- I had taught my parents to communicate with me that way -- asking for the protection of the Order of the Phoenix. But we were too late. By the time we arrived, there was already a Dark Mark over the house."

"Was it Snape?" Tonks whispers, thinking -- and then banishing -- the thought that it could be revenge for that stupid prank, just as Remus thinks and banishes the very same thought.

"I don't know. Surely not. Dumbledore would not trust him if he had been a part of the specific crimes against Order members' families."

"No," says Tonks. "Of course he wouldn't."

She shakes her head, mentally chastising herself for doubting _Albus Dumbledore_ , if even for a second. Remus sees her wavering, and his heart thuds in dread that if he is not alone in sometimes doubting the one they've trusted everything to, then perhaps there _is_ something to doubt. Feeling his eyes on her, Tonks looks at Remus and notices how exhausted he looks. She is about to stand, and take her leave, when he speaks again.

"Incidentally, it was then that Sirius began to suspect me of being the spy in the Order."

"What? After your parents were murdered? How--?"

"In the years after Hogwarts, I had never been able to hold down a job for more than a couple of months before the cause of my frequent illness was always sussed. Doomed to a life of poverty, it did not seem such a leap that I might be tempted by the Dark Lord's promises, epecially when Voldemort had deemed my own father useful."

"Like hell it didn't!"

"We were very young, Tonks. Younger than you. Sirius would believe anything of anyone if it gave him something to do to keep James and Lily and Harry out of harm's way."

He falls silent, and Tonks says nothing, nor thinks anything, her nightmare-plagued, sleep-deprived mind too full to process all that has filled it in the past few minutes.

"I need to sleep," she says, getting up and slipping out of Remus' dressing gown, missing its weight immediately. "And so do you."

"I hope you will be able to after all that." Remus stands and walks her to the door.

Passing the bedroom, Tonks cannot help looking into it, and she wonders if the scene she imagines, dreams, is anything like what actually happened.

"Do you remember it, Remus?"

His eyes hold hers. "Like a nightmare."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Greek Fire lore is taken from "The Rise of Gawain, Nephew of Arthur," which includes the recipe for Greek Fire: "In addition there must be included the gall bladder and testicles of a wolf that does not lack the ability to change its nature, a creature engendered by air and wind so that whatever it touches, by contact it receives that form."


	6. Chapter 6

"Right," says Tonks, Vanishing the dregs from her cauldron as Remus drains the chipped earthenware mug of his sixth dose of Wolfsbane Potion. She packs her mortar and pestle, ladle, and phials of ingredients into the cauldron, then asks, "Shall we get down to it, then?"

She gestures to the opposite end of the rickety table where the Werewolf Registry files are neatly stacked -- which is a bit odd to her, as the past three nights the table's been a disaster area of parchment, with Remus working while she brews, both of them poring over the documents after. Tonight he hasn't touched them, but instead has sat in front of the fire since her arrival, looking tired and ill.

He _is_ tired, more tired, in fact, than usual, thanks to the extra effort he's put into maintaining the self-control necessary to keep his distance until the plan is carried out to completion.

Tonight, however, he has other plans, plans which he thinks require far less energy than holding her at arms' length.

He is playing with fire, and he knows it, but last night drained him, and it's plain on Tonks' young face, pale and drawn, that this is taking a toll on her, as well. She is looking at those Werewolf Registry files as if she cannot wait to see the backside of them, which she can't, though her jaw is set and her eyes glitter with pure Hufflepuff determination to see the job done. Little does Remus know that her determination will extend to forever, through whatever he asks of her, if only he will give her the chance beyond tomorrow night's last dose of Wolfsbane Potion.

Nor does Remus realise the extent to which his actions are driven by his subconscious as his mind reacts to the awakening werewolf within him by reaching out for human connections. The only thing he can think clearly is how lovely she is to him tonight, in her tight hot pink tank top, olive green trousers that show an expanse of creamy white tummy and ride low, giving a glimpse of the tantalising hollows beneath her hipbones. Her short hair is the colour of a baby chick's down, and he wants to touch it to see if it is as soft as it looks -- which it is.

"No," he tells her, pushing up from his chair to take his mug to the sink. "I thought tonight we might enjoy ourselves."

For a second her surprise is obvious in her rounded eyes, but her gaping mouth quickly curves upward in a smile that is better than Firewhisky for inspiring courage in him. Remus flicks his wand at the mantel wireless to turn it on just as the deep-voiced announcer says, "We'll start off tonight's _Witching Hour_ with a request. Rainbow, if you're listening, Romulus says he's been dreaming of dancing with you to this classic jazz hit by Celestina Warbeck!"

Tonks gawps again as the opening strains of "A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love" swirl from the speakers, her face for a moment as red as if the request for her had been made with a Sonorus Charm at the Quidditch World Cup, before fading to a fetching shade of pink which, together with her words, speaks clearly of how pleased -- tickled even -- she is by this rather public show of feelings she before now only suspected, _hoped_ , he harboured.

"You've been dreaming of dancing with me?" she asks, incredulously.

Remus extends his hand to her. "You said it's not about the potion, but it is -- metaphorically speaking."

Her dark eyes seem to be looking straight into his heart, and she lifts her hand, but she hesitates to place it in his.

"I don't really dance," she says.

"That's okay." His long fingers close around her slim hand, and his breath ruffles her downy yellow hair as he pulls her to him. "I don't really lead."

"Don't sell yourself short," she says, not entirely in reference to the dancing, as her hand settles on his shoulder, her fingers unconsciously stroking the scar beneath his jumper as they did last night.

"I might say the same to you."

His hand rests at the small of her back on the warm patch of skin between trousers and tank top, and he does not realise that his fingertips instinctively slip into the valley of her spine, where the fine baby hairs are palest gold in the firelight and her creamy skin so soft. _She_ doesn't miss this, of course, or the sensation of those hairs rising as his touch sends a shiver upward, making her voice hitch in her throat when she tries to speak:

"I just hope Kingsley isn't listening." She steps on Remus' feet as he tries to lead her in a box step. "As he'll never let me hear the end of this."

"Kingsley?"

Remus' chuckle rumbles through his chest and into Tonks', not knowing how it makes every fibre of her being thrum, making her comfortable enough with this new shift in their relationship to tell him about Kingsley reading her note, though at the same time wondering whether it's really right to chat as usual when they are at the brink of what she hopes, _thinks_ , they are at the brink of.

"Next time Romulus sends you a message," he says, "I'll be sure to advise him to put insulting protective charms on it."

"Won't protective charms defeat the purpose of using code names?"

"Yes, well, considering you criticised Romulus and Rainbow--"

"Only Romulus!"

"Only because I interrupted you."

The playful lilt in his rasping voice is unmistakable, and yet it is also a caress, a tone which corresponds with his thumb stroking her thumb as he lowers their clasped hands to his chest, and leans his head down to her so that her yellow fringe brushes his forehead. She catches her breath again, which, with their bodies pressed so close together, he feels. Her retort contains the same bantering words it would have were this a week ago, or even last night, but her voice itself changes, gaining a softness, a specialness; these words are only for him:

"You don't hear me complaining about Romulus sending Rainbow a song."

Remus swallows, but that does not loosen the knot his heart, too big for the space in his chest it normally fills, has tied itself into in his throat. "Unless Kingsley hears it?"

Gripping his hand tighter, she tries to dart her eyes away, but doesn't quite manage it as she says, "Not even then."

He splays his fingers across her back, unabashedly pressing her closer, closing the gap between them by resting his cheek against her head.

_Oh come and stir my cauldron,_   
_And if you do it right,_   
_I'll boil you up some hot, strong love_   
_To keep you warm tonight!_

  
They are not dancing so much as swaying, and not in time to the music on the wireless, though this is largely because the WWN has faded into the distance, far beyond the world, the universe, encompassed by their two bodies pressed together. With her hand now on his neck, toying with the light brown hair spilling over his collar, Tonks notices again how warm he is, warmer even than last night, when she was so cold, and though on the surface his face looks so weary, his skin an ill pallor, an energy pulsates through him. Even if she is correct about it being the change already coming upon him, she likes him as he is right now. Regardless of what magic is at work in his veins, it is a part of Remus, and is, somehow, exactly what she's always wanted in a man.

"There's one thing I've been wondering about Romulus," she says.

He raises his head to meet her gaze. "And what's that, then?"

His eyes follow hers watching his Adam's apple bob as he swallows, then trails her white throat as she does the same, then the pink tip of her tongue sliding over her upper lip, which stills him, except for his heart, pounding beneath their joined hands. Hers matches its rhythm against the backs of his fingers just brushing the rise of her chest.

"He signed his name with a kiss," she says. "Was the part of the code? Or did he..." She pauses, and her chest heaves as she draws a breath. "...mean it?"

He swallows again, and once more her eyes follow the roll of his throat, lingering in the hollow where his collarbones join at the opening of his shirt, where she will kiss him if he gives the proper response to her question.

In the endless moment of silence, it seems that he is not going to answer the way she wants him to, and she steps on his feet again even though they have not been dancing for some time, her face burning in mortification that she could be so forward while his feelings remain largely a mystery.

His hesitation, in fact, is only to work out what is the best way to express all that he wants to say to this young woman in his arms which he cannot _actually_ say until a tomorrow that may steal that one chance from him, without crossing the line of an appropriate first kiss. But then the music and the press of her hips against his dictate a fluid course of action.

As Celestina's voice shimmers up the scale, he releases Tonks' waist to twirl her with a flourish. Catching her again, he tilts her back in a dip, leaning low over her, his loose jumper skimming the curves of her breasts. Her neck curves provocatively, and he pauses now to take in the sensations produced by his position in the cradle of her thighs, one of her legs curling slightly around him. An expanse of bare midriff and a heaving chest are laid out before him, anticipating his touch, inviting him to kiss her. His fingers press tighter into the small of her back and between her shoulder blades, pulling her closer in to him.

"Remus..."

The parting of her lips makes it impossible for him to delay touching his to them another second.

Their kiss is everything both of them hoped it would be, and much more than either of them expected. She tastes the bitterness of Wolfsbane Potion on his lips, but opens to him anyway, fisting his hair between her fingers as she's wanted to for so long, he not knowing that, but loving it and wanting every bit of him to be entangled and infused with every bit of her. It would be so easy to lose control, to allow himself to drown in her, and though not entirely conscious of this, she responds instinctively, deepening the kiss, pressing herself in to him.

He moves on from her mouth to kiss her cheeks, her eyelids, her chin, her neck, hoisting her upright into his arms as he progresses downward, lingering in the hollow at the neck of her top as she locks her legs around his waist. She wants him, and he groans, knowing it, knowing that she is waiting for him to venture further down, to slip a hand beneath her shirt, or to remove it altogether...But he cannot bring himself to do anything but pause, and taste her -- to savour this moment of being _wanted_...

It is the radio announcer that stops him from being swept away:

"Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that was Celestina Warbeck's 'A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love'. Romulus, I hope you got your dance with Rainbow and that you've secured her for the rest of _The Witching Hour_."

Though the kiss is broken, Remus is still a little lost in it; for Tonks, however, last night's broken moment is yet near to her thoughts, so that she mistakes his savouring her (though she cannot deny the blessing his lips, and _Merlin his tongue_ , bestow upon her skin) for hesitation to go forward. She cannot lose herself until he does, because whether he believes he can lead or not, she knows he's got a plan which it is very important she follow, or else she will never be free, _he_ will not, either -- the nightmares will not stop, but will have to be faced alone.

And neither of them wants to be alone.

Him especially.

She has never seen nor felt nor _imagined_ want such as she sees in his eyes and feels not from his body but from his soul now.

So she quickly catches her breath, and asks, "Why this, Remus? Why here, why doing this mysterious Order work?"

At once the haze of passion clears, and he remembers where they are and where they will be twenty-four hours from now and where he wants to be after that, so answers her honestly, and without hesitation:

"I think you know I like you as more than friends."

Her arms tighten around his neck, and she is very still. He lowers her to her feet, but keeps his arms around her waist.

"A great deal more than friends," he says. "Dora -- I haven't a doubt in my mind that I'm falling in love with you."

Tonks gives a little start, stumbling a little in place, but a smile blooms on her face, at which Remus grins back. She sways toward him, leaning in for another kiss. "I think I--"

Remus covers her mouth with his fingertips. "Much as I want to hear you say that, I cannot let you until you have seen exactly what I am."

" _Who_ , Remus, not what--"

"You are the most stubborn witch I have ever known," he says, laughing a little and leaning in to brush his lips to her forehead.

When he draws back she's looking at him with a raised eyebrow, and her hands have gone to her hips, challenging and questioning him all at once. She will not accept his word, or the Werewolf Registry's, which, if he is totally honest, he is glad of, and it makes his heart fill a little more with her.

But she _must_ understand.

"Stay with me tomorrow night," he says.

A pause, as her hands uncurl and her imposing stance relaxes. "Tomorrow night's full moon."

"I would like you to see me in my werewolf form. In fact, lest there be a shred of doubt in your mind about who _and_ what I am, I would like you to watch the transformation."

She looks at him, unblinking, for a full minute, though it feels like an hour or an age to him. Finally, she says, "To test the potion. For your research."

He scuffs her cheek with his thumb, and then opens his palm to sweep his fingers back into her yellow hair. "What do you keep telling me about the potion?"

She smiles faintly, and he pulls her against him to embrace her, feeling her tremble as he does his best to communicate without words that it is all about her, him, _them_.

His voice whispers through her hair, and then he releases her. "It is the only way."

"I told you." She gives her head a little shake as she flings back her shoulders. "Whatever you need of me, I'll do it."

The Gryffindor mistakes her staying power for courage of which he stands in admiration and terror, not knowing that beneath that fiercely defiant face, she is praying to Merlin that Remus' trust in her potion-brewing skills is not unfounded, and that full moon will prove, for once and for all, that in Remus, she has nothing to fear.

* * *

All night she dreams of being chained in cellars, or caged in the Ministry. A shaggy grey werewolf paces up and down before her, his tufted tail flicking back and forth in clear agitation. His amber eyes with their slits of pupils glare accusatorily at her as she cowers on cold, damp stone floors, whimpering.

'Please, I did my best -- Wolfsbane Potion's very complex, and I’m just an Auror. Please don't do this. You know me. I'm your _friend_. A great deal more than friends. I l--;

But the werewolf's growl cuts her off, and his snarling black lips curling back over his fangs snap at her fingers as she stretches them through the bars. Then the bars disappear, and she finds herself lying in bed, unbound but no more able to move as the wolf bounds through the window, howling, his fangs bared and coming at her face in a perversion of a kiss as Celestina Warbeck warbles, _I'll boil you up some hot strong, love, to keep you warm tonight!_

And then she wakes, hoarse and sobbing and tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, yet shivering, despite that; and even though this is the hottest summer on record, she wants Remus' flannel dressing gown and a mug of hot chocolate.

In spite of her need of him, she cannot face him now, not after what he said about her last nightmare, so sure that she is afraid of what he is, and she cannot bear to hear him talk about himself like that. So she goes to Grimmauld Place, intending to sleep the rest of the night in Remus' bed.

Of course she falls over the troll-foot umbrella stand and wakes Walburga, and Padfoot wakes everybody else in the house (and beckons adventure-seeking teenagers from their beds) when he bounds up from the kitchen, where he's been gnawing on the leftover bones from the chicken Molly roasted for dinner, baying like that boarhound of Hagrid's and scaring Tonks half to death because he is so huge and Grim-like and so like the awful creatures she's dreamt about, though he does, quite effectively, shut his mum's portrait up, especially when he snarls and bites at the drapes.

Coming over here as impulsively as she has, Tonks flounders when Molly, white-faced and clutching the banister, asks if something's happened at the Ministry (Arthur's on guard duty tonight), but then Padfoot stands up on his hind legs and changes back into Sirius, his grey eyes darkening as he looks from Molly with concern to Tonks, and asks, "Is Remus okay?"

"Everyone's fine," Tonks says, and then adds, impulsively, "I just couldn't sleep and fancied a chat with Sirius."

"Oh, well if you can't sleep," says Molly with a shaky, relieved laugh, hitching up her purple quilted dressing gown and descending the flight of stairs to the main floor, "you need a drink of warm milk."

"I'll look after her, Molly," says Sirius, stepping between her and the basement stairs, a little more sternly than the situation merits, and to which Molly response with a frown that holds back a biting remark about shots of Firewhisky not counting as looking after, though when Tonks nods to her with a little smile, Molly says good night and shoos the kids back up to their rooms.

In the kitchen, Sirius heats milk in a saucepan on the cooker and sets a steaming mug of it before Tonks, then sits across from her, propping his feet on the table. Predictably, He pours himself a shot of Firewhisky.

"Well, coz," he drawls. "How's Moony's mysterious and no doubt highly romantic work for the Order?"

"You've seen him transform," Tonks says, not in the mood to put up with Sirius' pettiness, which niggles more now she's learnt more about his mistrust of Remus so long ago. That is not important now, nor is it her grudge. This is about Remus. "What's it like?"

Sirius' eyes don't leave hers as he takes a drink. "Do you want to know because you like him and you're curious, or has he asked you to watch?"

Tonks sips her milk. "All of the above."

Sirius' brows knit together in surprise, but if any of the thoughts flicking through his mind are that now he doesn't even have full moons for feeling useful and his best mate's abandoning him for a girl (this is, in fact, the sole thought on his mind), he keeps it to himself.

When she tells him, eyes on her milk, that what she feels for Remus is a great deal more than _like_ , but starts with the same letter, the harsh lines of his face soften, and he looks at her as if he's seeing her for the first time.

"It's just like when you change into Padfoot, isn't it?" she asks. "Only the thing Remus turns into will want to bite me -- except that he's on Wolfsbane Potion, so he'll be perfectly safe, yeah?"

"It's not a damn thing like me changing into Padfoot. It's agony."

"Agony? As in...?"

"As in, I doubt the Cruciatis Curse would faze Remus after what he's borne every month since he was six."

He throws back another shot.

"Oh God."

Tonks' hand begins to shake so violently that she sloshes milk on herself as she attempts to raise her mug to her mouth, and when she sets it on the table, she knocks it over.

"The hell of it," says Sirius, Summoning a rag from Kreacher's den to sop up the milk, "is that he'll keep going through it every month till he's a _hundred_ and six. Or a hundred and _forty_ -six. And to answer your other question, I don't know about the Wolfsbane Potion. That night at Hogwarts when he forgot to take it, he didn't have his mind. He'd have attacked Harry and the other kids if I hadn't been there. And that would've killed him."

He's standing now, his once-handsome features as craggy and shadowy as Mad-Eye's as he glowers. Every muscle in him is coiled, like a spring ready to pop, and he hates this house even more, would destroy it and everything in it if he was alone, because of the injustice it represents. Tonks does not see the precise thoughts flashing through his mind, but her resentment of his past stupidity dies as she sees his fear and sadness at losing Remus in such a way (which she feels, too), recognises his dogged loyalty, which is increased tenfold in the fourteen years since his foolish mistrust.

"He's never transformed with a human," says Sirius, grabbing the Firewhisky bottle, but not the shot glass, and shuffling toward the stairs. "It'll be great for him if he can, but...Just be careful, Tonks."

He cares about her well-being, of course, but more than that, he fears Remus might be pressing his luck at avoiding what he always feared most. Tonks doesn't miss his meaning with this increased pressure to get Remus' potion perfectly right.

She needs sleep. Reluctantly, she trudges up to Remus' room, even though she's sure she'll dream of poisoning him, or of the potion not working.

Instead, she dreams of pain.


	7. Chapter 7

On the seventh night, the shabby door of Monkshood Croft is answered by a Remus who is clearly in pain. Well -- the changes in his appearance are not _so_ pronounced that anyone but a closest friend (or the woman who loves him) would notice, but as the woman who loves him is the person in question, the alterations of his features do not slip by unnoticed, as they did the last time he was in the presence of humans just prior to transformation: with Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ronald Weasley in the Shrieking Shack.

All week his face has grown increasingly more lined than the usual crow's feet at the corners of his blue eyes and the creases around his mouth, but tonight is more than fatigue. Tonks' shape-shifter's eye notes how the muscles beneath his ashen skin strain, as if in a heroic attempt to retain their current shape -- which, though Remus does not know it, is precisely what is taking place.

The way he moves is the most telling difference. Ordinarily -- last night, even, as they danced -- he moves with an effortless grace, a power belied by his thin physique. Now he seems to require deliberation and sheer force of will just to lean in and kiss her cheek, to take her cauldron from her while he holds the cottage door open for her with his shoulder so that she can pass through, to shut it behind her and then carry her things on the cleared-off kitchen table. She would believe him if he told her that most of his day has been spent in his armchair, grateful for the wand that allows him to move as little as possible, though of course he does _not_ tell her this, and indeed these little acts are performed not so much for manners' sake as for that of his fragile male ego desperate to prove himself virile and in his prime as his age would indicate.

Tonks _thinks_ she has an idea of what Remus is experiencing now in his body, though she cannot be sure, not feeling what he is feeling. Her hypothesis is, however, correct, and it would be a fairly accurate comparison to describe pre-transformation for Remus as much like wearing a new morph is for her: he is uncomfortable in a skin that is no longer quite his own.

If only Remus knew that these empathic thoughts are the ones going through Tonks' mind as she scrutinises him, then he would not drop his eyes down from her attentive Auror gaze, or tug at the hair at his nape, or make a ridiculous excuse:

"Forgive me. I should have warned you that just before moonrise I am a sight that makes eyes sore."

"Bollocks!"

Flushing, Tonks' eyes swing away from his face and settle just over his shoulder to the mantel Lunascope, which shows that scarcely two hours remain until moonrise. Plenty of time to brew the potion, though she would not have minded a little more, just for comfort, and to sit with him, and chat like normal, if that is possible.  
Unfortunately for her, it's not -- at least not tonight, with Remus on edge and nervous about what is to come for this transformation and their relationship. Not knowing these next two hours are doomed to awkwardness and tension, Tonks nudges him aside not quite as gently as she means, she takes her usual place at the table to get his potion brewing.

"You look a bit tired is all," she says, "and you sure as hell aren’t the only one."

Remus has enough of his wits about him yet to know better than to tell a witch she looks tired, but the faintly purple skin beneath her eyes does not escape his notice. Though he suspects that nightmares about werewolves kept her up again last night, he says nothing, for soon enough she will see the nightmare in reality, and he will know it, and she will not be able to hide from the truth any longer. And anyway, she is already talking again:

"Kingsley noticed and asked if Rainbow stayed up all night dancing with Romulus."

"Did he now?" asks Remus, amusement adding a lilt to his voice and ebbing some of the strain from his face, though Tonks doesn't see, as she is intently measuring out potion ingredients into her cauldron.

Also, she is hoping Remus won't read the truth, which is that no, Kingsley didn't now. What he actually said was, 'Did Rainbow stay up all night doing the horizontal tango with Romulus?' but in light of where their dance ended last night: Remus making a relationship beyond a few fevered kisses contingent upon whatever happens tonight, it hardly seems the best time to talk about innuendo, though Remus himself, on the other hand, might lead an outside observer to believe other things.

"What did you tell him?" he asks.

She didn't _tell_ Kingsley anything so much as she made a rude hand gesture at him, which showed Kingsley, for the first time, the family resemblance between her and his 'fugitive'. She's been out of sorts all day, due to her sleepless night, irritation bubbling close to the surface, and just as it didn't take much for her to boil over at Kingsley, she feels a similar rise toward Remus, even though he hasn't even teased her.

"Now's not exactly the time for chit-chat, is it? I mean, I presume you don't want your report to the Wizengamot to be, 'The Auror botched my potion, so I was unable to test whether Wolfsbane Potion enables werewolves to transform around humans without incident'?"

"Of course not, I'm sorry," says Remus in a pinched voice, almost as if it is painful for him to talk. And indeed it is. His throat hurts, for one thing; but more than that there is a tightness in his chest, a burning, as if he has held his breath for far too long, or is drowning.

Fumbling for the armchair, he recalls having felt this way before, many times, whenever Sirius told him off for making up excuses not to be with girls. He wonders if all this week is just one more excuse, if he's subconsciously set out to sabotage whatever this thing is with Tonks because he is afraid of love.

He _is_ afraid of love -- or of losing it -- but this week has been one of the more defining Gryffindor periods of his life. The only way he can sabotage himself is not to follow through. None of which, of course, he can know, as his own mind is too plagued by insecurity and desire and _hope_ to be objective. All he can know is what he sees through the lenses of his own past experiences, and since he has never let a woman into this part of his life, he therefore has none; and as he will not look at her and see how wretched she looks as she watches him so stiffly into his chair, he can only think the worst, and question again if this is really safe, when she spent three years training to be a Dark Wizard chaser -- not apprenticing with a potionsmaster to brew sedatives for Dark Creatures.

But then she blurts: "Isn't there anything we can do about the pain?"

Remus looks at her at the table, her heart-shaped face wreathed in steam rising from her cauldron which bubbles over an enchanted flame.

"Sirius told me your transformations are..." Her pause tells him she's not quoting directly. "...quite painful."

Remus stands again, with such effort that she almost wishes she'd kept silent to preserve whatever precious strength he's got left, though what weighs him down, slowing his steps, is actually not physical so much as his internal battle with rising annoyance at Sirius for talking about his condition behind his back, and vexation with himself for being such a bloody hypocrite when his very own plan is to bare all to her.

"It was much worse in the days before the Wolfsbane Potion, when the mind of the werewolf compelled me to bite and scratch myself in the absence of...." He pauses, but a little voice in his mind whispers 'sodding great hypocrite' and he recalls how plainly he said it to Harry and the kids,' so he forces the words out. "...in the absence of human prey."

She sprinkles the measured amount of aconite into the cauldron. "The transformation itself, though -- it hurts? You're the one that thinks I need to taste the bitter truth, Remus, so don't sugar coat it now, all right?"

"Dora--"

Her eyes glitter with tears. He reaches for her, but withdraws his hand when she picks up the ladle to stir the potion, clutching the handle so tightly that her knuckles turn white. "Why does it have to be different from Animagus transformation?"

"Because it is a curse."

She fills the mug he set out for her with potion, and their fingers brush as she offers it to him and as before, a connection passes between them, of so much more than mutual attraction, beyond even emotional connection. As a Metamorphmagus, Tonks recognises the particular energy pulsing through him:

He is already changing.

Remus sees a look of comprehension on her face, though _he_ doesn't quite grasp what she's sensing in him. She looks troubled, and sad, though still not particularly frightened as he drinks his potion, and he ponders what to say to her to put her worries about the pain to rest, though it's just as well she speaks first as, 'Don't worry your pink head about me, I've got a high threshold for pain' would hardly be the right ones.

"When you finish that, why don't you make us some hot chocolate?"

It is not a suggestion so much as a command, which surprises Remus slightly, as she's never said anything remotely bossy to him before -- though she does to Mad-Eye and Sirius on a regular basis, and occasionally Kingsley. What Remus doesn't realise that behind it is a firm decision on Tonks' part that she _will not_ change just because he is changing. All he can think about is that the last time she drank hot chocolate was after nightmares about werewolves, or a werewolf, which he strongly suspects might not have been just any werewolf, as she told him so emphatically.

"Are you all right?" he asks, and does not miss the way her shoulders stiffen, even as she smiles, a more characteristic sparkle lighting her eyes.

"Fine," she says. "Only if you're planning to kiss me again, I prefer the taste of hot chocolate to Wolfsbane Potion."

For a moment Remus continues to look at her in some surprise and uncertainty, but then his features relax into a lopsided grin that _almost_ wipes away the weary lines from his face.

Some of them, however, are beyond Tonks' powers of flirtation to wipe away, and as she and Remus sit, sipping their hot chocolate, neither of them hears a note of _The Witching Hour_ , not even Celestina Warbeck belting out high notes: he for being rather preoccupied with what is taking place in his body at the moment, and on controlling his reactions so as not to give her alarm any sooner than is necessary; she for staring alternately at the Lunascope creeping closer to full moonrise and at Remus' increasingly more rigid posture. His white-knuckled fingers curl around the arms of his chair (claw-like, though she tells herself she doesn't actually think this horrible thing). He blinks his glazed eyes hard and often, as if against tears, and they are rimmed with dark circles. The firelight throws into relief his flexing cheek muscle; he is gritting his teeth.

The strain is his unconscious struggle against the change, and though Tonks is unaware of this, she sees what is happening and hates it, unable to think of anything more horrible than having no choice in the matter of her body changing.

With minutes to go, Remus gets up and begins to pace, not realising how this action hearkens back to her nightmares of the grey wolf pacing, which she hates herself for thinking, because Remus is _not_ the werewolf of her dreams.

He walks because his muscles and limbs and joints feel awkward sitting, and are stiff, and he feels caged -- but she does, too, and by what's coming.

At last, his halting gait and the vein throbbing in his temple become too much for her, and she cries out:

"I don't think I can do this!"

He halts, his back to her, and leans heavily against the mantel. Full moon is so close now. He can smell her, and it is a torment, her slipping away from him like this just as his human mind is giving way to the wolf's.

"Then go, Tonks. You have done more--"

"No!"

He turns just as she clatters to him, grabbing the front of his shirt, twisting the fabric in her fisted hands. The wildness in her eyes, the fierceness of her expression makes her face look angular, strange, and it startles him.

"I'm not leaving you," she says, "I just don't think I can bear to watch the transformation. You'll be in pain and I can't stand the thought of not being able to do a bloody thing about it. You're already in pain, and it's tearing me apart. I'm not a Gryffindor, Remus, I'm just a Hufflepuff--oh!"

The exclamation is because he is gripping her upper arms and pressing his mouth to hers, his lips parting hers and his tongue gliding into her mouth, his teeth raking along the edge of her lower lip, so that when he pulls back, just as abruptly as he kissed her, her lips are red and swollen.

"I think you need to see to believe that I am a werewolf, but I cannot bear to hurt you. You can go into the bedroom," he tells her, taking her arm and guiding her across the shabby living room. "You will know when it is over."

He speaks tersely without meaning to, because his tongue and lips, though still their proper human shapes, are not quite right for speech, and to Tonks' astonishment, when his hand leaves her arm, he begins to work at the buttons of his shirt.

"But never say 'just a Hufflepuff', Dora Tonks, unless you mean just spectacularly amaz-- _AGH_!"

The cry is drawn out, hoarse and higher than his voice as his body seizes up.

"Remus!" Tonks cries, and he is shedding his shirt quickly (his scar is a fresh, open wound now, red and raw as the day he was bitten), now unbuckling his belt with shaking hands.

"If you're going to go, go n- _AGH!_ "

She turns, then, and bolts to the bedroom, mostly to hide her crumpling face from him, but her sob reaches him anyway, cutting him more deeply than the moon's power that rips through him to the marrows, because her cry sets off a voice in his mind. Not a human voice, but one which snarls:

 _'Humans know naught but pity and revulsion for our kind. We must make her like us.'_

" _NO!_ " he screams, or tries to; it comes out more a roar as his neck snaps back, thickening and elongating as his face broadens into a canine snout.

The word is discernable enough to Tonks, who stops dead in the bedroom doorway, back to him still as he hastens to strip off the rest of his clothing before his hands change into paws useless for anything but tearing into human flesh. His _'no'_ rings in her ears against the white noise of agony and her own promise to do _'Whatever you need of me'_ in duet with Remus' _not 'just a Hufflepuff.'_ She does not know that the werewolf's mind -- not dead, as Damocles Belby theorised, just not alone -- is poisoning him as effectively as the potion would have done if brewed incorrectly. (Which it is not, though it has crossed Remus' mind that he would not be hearing the werewolf's thoughts, feeling his desires, if the potion were working.) She _does_ know that what Remus needs right now is not courage, which he possesses in scads.

What Remus needs of her is _loyalty_.

That is all that is required to make her turn round again and bellow over the howls:

"I'm here, Remus, I'm here! As long as you need me, I'm with you!"

She weeps freely as she says it, because the extent of disfigurement before her is not something that ever crossed her mind when she lay awake between nightmares last night, trying to visualise what this might be like.

And certainly in her fantasies of seeing him naked, her imagination never supplied anything remotely like _this_ scenario.

It is indecent to watch, but she does not avert her gaze, or attempt to hide her tears, because Remus' blue eyes are locked on her, also watery.

 _Remus' eyes_ , positioned further apart than normal over the long, rounded canine snout inside of which human teeth have not lengthened into a carnivore's incisors....

Remus' eyes, beneath a heavy brow and pointed ears positioned atop his head and laid back against grey-brown hair. It is his own hair, as yet, not a coarse fur coat, and in fact apart from his natural, light body hair his mutating form is still covered in pale human flesh, mottled blue and yellow-green with bruises from dozens of blood vessels rupturing as bones snap and muscles build. Though Tonks is unaware of the medical reasons for the bruising, she understands what Remus has been telling her:

Lycanthropy is a curse.

Yet Remus' rich eyes contain a measure of peace, of being _blessed_ as they hold her, even though he is now no longer at eye level to her, his hips rotating to accommodate a canine stance as he drops on to all fours; the arms she admired last night are a werewolf's rangy forelegs, and his lean man-legs are shortening, shins bending backward, breaking to form the hock joint. He yelps as this occurs, in a strangled voice that is not his own, not human, but wolfish, and Tonks starts to reach out to comfort him, but catches herself. It would not be decent -- and from his open maw the even rows of human teeth grow into fangs full of the poison to perpetuate his kind.

There is a shared gasp as grey bristles sprout suddenly from millions of follicles opening in his skin, like blades of grass springing from the earth in a fast-motion Muggle video recording; together they sigh at his being covered, at last given a modicum of dignity in this cruelly immodest situation.

Remus' sigh, however, contains a note of exasperation, as well, at the little smile Tonks gives him, as if, now that the worst part of the transformation is over, he is just as ordinary as ever to her, an Animagus in wolf form. Which is precisely what she _is_ thinking, as Remus Lupin's blue eyes peer at her out of that wolf face which she cannot help but think is rather beautiful. He looks lonely to her, and young.

Technically, he _is_ young, the transformation not yet complete, the dark magic still surging through his veins, yet to reach every unseen part of him.

And he is lonely, too -- the sort of lonely that gnaws like physical hunger in the pit of your belly.

Only hunger is not strong enough a word.

He is _ravenous_.

True wolves are social creatures, miserable when cut off from their packs. Werewolves are no different, and therein lies their danger:

A werewolf without a pack will create for himself a pack.

 _'The female has let her guard down. We must make her our mate.'_

Tonks does not hear the growling voice in Remus' mind, but she does see the round black pupils of his eyes stretch into menacing slits, streaks of yellow shooting through the blue before exploding amber throughout like a firework.

She startles back against the wall, clutching at the frame of the open bedroom door as her other hand scrabbles for her wand.

Eight-inch alder, unicorn hair core. As familiar to her and tractable as if it is part of her own body. If not for the light, smooth wood gripped firmly in her right hand, she would think she is having a nightmare, because it is exactly what she has dreamt ever since the second night, when Sirius told her of his one-time scheme to give Snape the fright of his life, and it occurred to her that she might as easily make Remus feral as kill him.

The werewolf's nostrils flair, sniffing warm human flesh and blood.

Black lips curl, dripping with saliva as he bares his teeth in a snarl.

It is not the growl emanating from his belly that makes her legs buckle, then give way, causing her to slide down the wall to the floor. It is the amber eyes, locked on her and gleaming with mad hatred.

"It's you," she whispers. "In my nightmares -- you -- you're the werewolf."

The growl dies.

Tonks stops breathing. Her heart hangs suspended in her chest.

Monkshood Croft is silent as a grave.

The werewolf stares at her.

She stares back at the werewolf.

He thinks of her as prey.

She _knows_ he thinks of her as prey.

She does not move.

The werewolf raises a paw to step toward her.

"Please don't do this," she whimpers. "You know me. I'm Tonks -- Dora -- _Nymphadora,_ if you like. Just...Remus, _please_..."

His heavy grey paw falls to the floor again with a faint thump on the rough floorboard.

The amber eyes stare into the black ones...

And then Remus drops onto his belly, turns his back to her, curls up on the tatty woven hearthrug, tufted tail tucked neatly around him, and sleeps.

* * *

  
Tonks sleeps, too.

If Mad-Eye ever finds out his protégée slept in the same room with a transformed werewolf, he will lecture her as he has never lectured her about constant vigilance and the wiles of Dark Creatures whose minds may or may not be tempered by potions.

(If Mad-Eye ever finds his protégée slept in the same room with an _un_ -transformed werewolf, he will _want_ to lecture her about the un-tempered lusts of wizards whose minds are almost always under the influence of Firewhisky and the disastrous effects they have has on vigilance in times of war; but instead he will only blush to the bottom of the deepest crags in his face and grumble under his breath without meeting her eye.)

Remus, waking up, a man again -- and a naked one at that -- is not sure whether the Wolfsbane Potion _did_ temper the werewolf's mind as much as it should have done, as he does not recall having sensed any of the horrifying desires he felt last night back in his teaching days, though if he had ever transformed in the same room as a human, he would know that the potion Tonks brewed for him was brewed as perfectly as Severus Snape ever did it -- and better-tasting, too.

Whatever the case may be, it is enough to know that he feels none of those things _now_ , as he lies on the thin rug on the hard wooden floor, watching her chest rise and fall in even breaths.

She fell asleep sitting up, her fingers still loosely curled around the hilt of her wand. Her head lolls on her shoulder, tilted back against the wall. The promise that when she wakes she will have the mother of all neck cramps prompts Remus to push himself with trembling arms up from the floor, pull on his trousers, which look rather worse for the not-wearing after a night crumpled on the floor where he stepped out of them seconds before his feet turned to paws.

Padding to her in his bare feet, he notes that despite the less than comfortable position of her neck, her heart-shaped face looks peaceful and untroubled, as he has not seen her look this week, her hair the same bubblegum pink as it was when she turned up at Monkshood Croft -- though then her face was lined then from the restless sleep of the previous night.

No nightmares trouble her now, despite Remus' fears that last night would make them worse than ever for her. She was afraid of him in his werewolf, he knows it, and it will be useless for her to try to deny it. But there is no sign of fear as he drops to a crouch in front of her.

Fear, in fact, is at this moment being driven away in her dreams, ragged black robes bearing cold and the stench of death scattering like frightened birds in the wake of an enormous loping figure.

"Dora," he whispers, laying his hands on her shoulders, gently shaking her.

His voice reaches her dreams, swirling around her in a silvery tangible form, and she smiles, gives a little _hmm_ of laughter, scrunching up one shoulder as if something is tickling, nuzzling her neck. And then her eyes flutter open.

The beautiful dark eyes that refused to close on him last night, which drift down to look at his bare chest and torso, pale in the morning dim, which makes her face break into a full grin and him into a flush that fizzes warmly in his belly.

"Wotcher, you."

"You slept."

"Mmm, yeah..."

She stretches her arms over her head, reaches back clumsily to massage her neck. Immediately his fingers slip around to the back of her neck, rubbing the knots at the base of her shoulders.

Giving him a grateful look, Tonks goes on, "You went to sleep, and I got bored, and when I get bored I get sleepy." Abruptly, her smile vanishes and her forehead wrinkles between her eyebrows as they knit. "I thought I'd wake up when you changed back."

"I didn't even wake when I changed back. It is considerably less traumatic."

"Good. Only I was afraid you'd have to go through that torture all over again..." Her eyes bend, and she draws in a shuddering breath, leaning into him. "Remus, it was awful."

He starts to slide his hands down over her back to pull her into an embrace, but instead lets them fall to his sides. "The worst part was what I wanted to do to you--"

"Not you. The werewolf."

Sitting back on his heels, Remus looks up at the ceiling and grits his teeth. "I swear to Merlin you are the most stubborn witch--"

"I prefer _loyal_. Hufflepuff, remember? And not _just_ a Hufflepuff."

"Nymphadora, I and the wolf are one!"

"Exactly! You're the wolf, but the wolf is also you. And _don't_ call me Nymphadora, Remus."

"Last night you said I could."

"I take it back." Her hands skim over his chest, fingertips brushing his neck (he shivers) on their way up to cup his face. "But that's the only thing I take back."

Sat knee to knee, their foreheads are so close that her pink hair feathers his skin, and his greying fringe tickles hers. The sensations of her are overwhelming, and he feels himself giving in...

"You were afraid," he says. "I felt your fear. It fed the wolf's--"

"I felt yours, too. That was how I knew I wasn't in danger."

"But your nightmares--"

This time, his words are cut off by his own voice breaking. His head drops forward onto her knees, and she cradles him against her breasts as her fingers rake through the silver strands of his hair.

"Do you know what I dreamt last night?" she whispers.

He shakes his head.

"A silver werewolf spirit that drove fear out of my heart."

He looks up at her, wonder wiping away the careworn lines of his face. "You mean like a Patronus?"

"Like a Patronus. _Remus_ \-- I know what you are. But it's because I know _who_ you are that I'm not afraid. Because I love you."

She has said it.

 _She loves him._

Three little words, spoken rather quietly, and yet striking him with all the force of the sea, sweeping the ground from beneath his feet, rousing him from a life which up till now he has gone through asleep. He takes her face in his hands and kisses her.

He clings to her as he kisses her, and his body, pressed so close to hers, trembles. _Trembles_ \-- this man who last night made _her_ tremble with fear that he would curse her. Yes, she will admit it now: in that moment of staring into hateful amber eyes, she feared Remus.

But just as in the nights before that, when she looked into blue eyes darkened with desire, and the man would not take what he wanted when she was there for the taking, the wolf would not take, either. That is how she knew, how she will _always_ know (for there will be no going back from this; she is caught in an undertow where the nightmares may well continue to haunt her, but he will lie beside her, his voice waking her); that is why she allows him to enfold her in his arms, and bless her, as he receives the blessing she pours out on him. For he is trembling not out of fear, but as she does, with the magnitude of this thing. He is like a drowning man -- a drowning man who is quite content to lose himself in this tide that wakens him to life.

Fear will return later -- when harsh reality rears its head to remind him that he cannot afford to take her out to dinner, or buy her the Christmas presents she deserves; when he dare not go out with her wearing her true face, lest her sterling reputation be tarnished for fraternising with Dark Creatures -- lest she be made an outcast because of him, a cursed mate even without his administering the bite.

But for now, Remus is a Gryffindor through and through, eager to leap into the rising swell of blessing life has seen fit to grace him with, not mindful for the moment of the fact that the tides change, governed by the moon just as he is. He loves this woman, and she loves him, and there is a potion she can brew to tame him, and she believes in the power of his human mind over the monster's. She feared him in her dreams, and yet she came to him for comfort.

And now she dreams of a Patronus.

He cannot reject this. It is too much to reject, too wonderful; he is no fool -- or at least not for any other reason than for love. He can sleep no more. He must answer the call, _her_ call, to wake, and live this sweetest of dreams.

He breaks their kiss to tell her that he loves her, but manages no more than a tremulous whisper. They are both breathless, and shaky, as if the very air of Monkshood Croft tremors with the floodgate opened in the two hearts pounding beneath the thatched roof and between the walls of crumbling brick.

In the midst of it, Tonks' husky voice begins to croon:

"Oh come and stir my cauldron..."

She brushes her lips against his.

"And if you do it right..."

She kisses his cheek.

"I'll boil you up some hot, strong love..."

Her lips nip at his earlobe, and her breath makes the hairs at the back of his neck rise as she whispers, "To keep you warm tonight."

Pressing her back onto the floor, covering her body with his own, he nuzzles her neck.

"But it's not night," he murmurs.

And then he loves her.

 _The End_


End file.
